Ubuntu renders fonts different (worse) than Windows

[xawthe]

Hi everyone,

I have just switched to Ubuntu 10.10 from Windows 7 and love it.

I'm facing however a few problems but the most annoying to me is the fact that Ubuntu renders the same fonts (and I mean the same ttf files) in a different way. All the web pages look worse in Ubuntu than in Windows.

Now I have seen some posts where accustomed Ubuntu users actually say that Ubuntu's antialising algorithms are better. I say to them, print a sheet of paper and realize that Windows is rendering much closer to the "real thing". I would say that Ubuntu makes fonts more fat and less smooth than Windows.

What I have not seen is a solution on how to get Ubuntu to render fonts the same way or at least similar to Windows even if let's say that Windows's rendering is bad not Ubuntu's :).

I have played with the Appearance Preferences and I'm left with choosing between:
1. "Slight" Hinting which produces worse but acceptable smoothness but makes Arial, for example, look more fat (increases width of characters)
2. "Medium" Hinting which produces unacceptable smoothness but doesn't deform the character as the "Slight" option does.

Anybody knows some different options, in some config files maybe?

Thanks a lot.

[hkarn]

Yeah most of the text looks rather bad on my netbook in ubuntu tbh. Is there some equivalent to the MS cleartext or whatever it was called that cleared up fronts on crappy monitors by letting you choose from various sample sequences what looks best or whatnot.