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HOWTO install infinality font-settings for Debian

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hadrons123
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Re: HOWTO install infinality for Debian Wheezy i386, amd64

#16 Post by hadrons123 »

I didn't try wheezy recently, but prebuilt binaries for jessie works fine for me. For some reason XFCE font rendering doesn't work as expected in jessie.

Edit:
I had to adjust the font settings in XFCE with slight hinting which seems to solve my rendering issues.
Last edited by hadrons123 on 2013-12-18 10:10, edited 2 times in total.
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Loafers
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Re: HOWTO install infinality for Debian Wheezy i386, amd64

#17 Post by Loafers »

hadrons123 wrote:I didn't try wheezy recently, but prebuilt binaries for jessie works fine for me. For some reason XFCE font rendering doesn't work as expected in jessie.
i'm an idiot — didn't notice the new binaries in your original post. works fine now!

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Loafers
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Re: HOWTO install infinality for Debian Wheezy i386, amd64

#18 Post by Loafers »

Visually I am not experiencing any problems, but the console constantly spams the following:

Code: Select all

ERROR: ld.so: object '/usr/lib//freetype-infinality/libfreetype.so.6.8.1' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored.
Anybody else experiencing this?

EDIT:

Okay I found this thread.

I checked /etc/profile.d/freetype-infinality and it has the necessary line:

Code: Select all

export LD_PRELOAD="/usr/lib/${DEB_HOST_MULTIARCH}/freetype-infinality/libfreetype.so.6.8.1:${LD_PRELOAD}"
However, I just noticed the error output says "/usr/lib//..." (two slashes); furthermore, /usr/lib/freetype-infinality does not even exist at all...

Any ideas suggestions :D?

rigr
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Re: HOWTO install infinality for Debian Wheezy i386, amd64

#19 Post by rigr »

Loafers wrote:Visually I am not experiencing any problems, but the console constantly spams the following:

Code: Select all

ERROR: ld.so: object '/usr/lib//freetype-infinality/libfreetype.so.6.8.1' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored.
Anybody else experiencing this?

EDIT:

Okay I found this thread.

I checked /etc/profile.d/freetype-infinality and it has the necessary line:

Code: Select all

export LD_PRELOAD="/usr/lib/${DEB_HOST_MULTIARCH}/freetype-infinality/libfreetype.so.6.8.1:${LD_PRELOAD}"
However, I just noticed the error output says "/usr/lib//..." (two slashes); furthermore, /usr/lib/freetype-infinality does not even exist at all...

Any ideas suggestions :D?
I had to install the package dpkg-dev (which contains dpkg-architecture) to solve this problem. Try that :)

Btw, hadrons123, maybe you could add that people can run this command to configure the Infinality style:

Code: Select all

# bash /etc/fonts/infinality/infctl.sh setstyle

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hadrons123
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Re: HOWTO install infinality font-settings for Debian

#20 Post by hadrons123 »

I assumed that infinality settings are the best and didn't see a need for setstyle option to set it up for different option. I shall edit my post as you suggest for the sake of users.
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shirish
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Re: HOWTO install infinality font-settings for Debian

#21 Post by shirish »

I am gonna wait for infinality to come to Debian. This is way out of my league.
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hadrons123
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Re: HOWTO install infinality font-settings for Debian

#22 Post by hadrons123 »

infinality in unlikely to come to debian repos. The upstream infinality patch dev/maintainer is not interested in packaging for Debian too.

Maybe you download and install the binaries I have posted in the first post. download the binaries, open a terminal and with root access

Code: Select all

dpkg -i file1 file2 file3
and you will be done.
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pmu
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Re: HOWTO install infinality font-settings for Debian

#23 Post by pmu »

Hi hadrons123,

Thank you for the links. It worked !!

Now the fonts look much better.
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michapma
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Re: HOWTO install infinality font-settings for Debian

#24 Post by michapma »

I just build the packages on an i386 system, and have a few notes.

Not all necessary packages were already installed on the system to follow the instructions:
  • Package build-essential provides the command dpkg-checkbuilddeps
  • Package devscripts provides the command debuild
  • Package fakeroot provides fakeroot, which is asked for when executing build.sh for the respective packages
Knowing this in advance would have saved me time. Since I found this out via web search, I also installed the package debian-installer, which is probably not required.

Some font changes are immediately visible after installing the packages, but it's necessary to log out and back on to see the actual results.

I was already fairly happy with the font rendering on this machine, but I have to admit, the results with Infinality are even better.

Note to kcanbe:
Not sure what you mean by "the native Debian way." From the same page that you linked:
The default fonts in Debian derived distributions like Ubuntu and Linux Mint have better looking fonts when compared to default Debian squeeze since the ubuntu-based distros have heavily patched cairo or freetype2 whereas Vanilla Debian doesn't do patching as much as they do. A lot of things about the cairo package has changed recently in wheezy and unstable which have brought almost the same font setup to Debian (But not Squeeze or old) but you have to set it up to your liking.
Does "the native Debian way" mean without patching? I do see your point that it's necessary to install (free) software not included in the repositories, for which Debian of course does also provide a mechanism. In any case, I especially find the hinting to be better using Infinality.

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hadrons123
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Re: HOWTO install infinality font-settings for Debian

#25 Post by hadrons123 »

To save some time for the mass, I would like to admit that I was the one who edited those sections of the wiki couple of years ago and I believe it might not suit to later versions of fontconfig and freetype and the config provided was taken from arch linux wiki to be honest. The native debian way of fontconfig is butt ugly. The config I have given in the wiki is better. Ubuntu configs are still better than the config in the wiki. But nothing beats infinality configs yet. To have maximal gains of infinality configs you need a 1080p LED screen. The lower screen resolutions are only marginally better and that's why lot of people are having trouble making a real difference before and after infinality. But for careful observer the differences are pretty obvious even with a low resolution screen. In case if some of you didn't get even an ioto of difference its most probably becoz you didn't follow the instructions from the first post properly.

These infinality configs can be added in Debian repos and it has no patent infringing technology(expired patents) but the Debian developers has not even made any measures to at least take the ubuntu cairo or freetype for Debian leave alone the Debian policy guidelines for infinality patches. But upstream freetype had started to accept some the patches from infinality developer in 2012 but no progress beyond that and the patches migration is not complete yet. All we can do is to hope infinality patches are merged with upstream.
Last edited by hadrons123 on 2014-01-27 12:16, edited 1 time in total.
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michapma
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Re: HOWTO install infinality font-settings for Debian

#26 Post by michapma »

As I understand it, Debian essentially packages and distributes software; there is some basic configuration, but it is up to the user to configure things to their liking.

Over lunch I just built the packages for my amd64 installation at home. Couple more notes for the how-to:
  • Since it's a how-to, it might be useful to some if you note what steps should be done as root (installation of packages) and what as a normal user (git, dpkg-checkbuilddeps, building).
  • The current build versions for me (as of 2014-01-27) were freetype-infinality_2.4.9-3 and fontconfig-infinality_1-2; perhaps an update of the linked binaries is called for.
Thanks again for this how-to. The fonts in applications like Iceweasel and Libreoffice especially look significantly better than what I had configured, even though I'd made several attempts at improving the configuration.

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michapma
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Re: HOWTO install infinality font-settings for Debian

#27 Post by michapma »

I forgot: wanted to emphasize that it's not necessary to restart the machine, just log out and log in, including anytime you use

Code: Select all

# bash /etc/fonts/infinality/infctl.sh setstyle

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hadrons123
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Re: HOWTO install infinality font-settings for Debian

#28 Post by hadrons123 »

not even that. all it needs is an application restart.
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imran-uk
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Re: HOWTO install infinality font-settings for Debian

#29 Post by imran-uk »

Just wanted to thank hadrons123 for his/her amd64 debs, I'm using them with the i3 window manager on Wheezy - terminal and browser fonts now look more ..."rich and juicy" are the words I'd describe them. They just look much better and on a par with Windows.

I'm using it on a Lenovo W500 which has a 1050 vertical native rez.

By the way I also got this:

Code: Select all

ERROR: ld.so: object '/usr/lib//freetype-infinality/libfreetype.so.6.8.1' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored.
Which I resolved by installing the dpkg-dev package.

May your hadrons keep colliding hadrons123 until you find the Higgs Boson.

Alad
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Re: HOWTO install infinality font-settings for Debian

#30 Post by Alad »

The LD_PRELOAD settings are deprecated so you might as well remove them (I've had problems in chroots and after uninstalling infinality).

Code: Select all

# rm /etc/profile.d/freetype-infinality.sh



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squeeze
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Re: HOWTO install infinality font-settings for Debian

#33 Post by squeeze »

“Have you tried turning it off and on again?”

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hadrons123
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Re: HOWTO install infinality font-settings for Debian

#34 Post by hadrons123 »

Please read previous posts, for better understanding of infinality. Ubuntu font sets is not my target for this guide.
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squeeze
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Re: HOWTO install infinality font-settings for Debian

#35 Post by squeeze »

Well sorry for beeing offtopic here but unfortunately the packages for jessie are very outdated and i'm too dumb (aka inexpierienced) to rebuild these packages for debian: https://launchpad.net/~rjvbertin/+archi ... inaltimate via https://wiki.debian.org/CreatePackageFromPPA. (cairo fails to configure with font-stamp error, fontconfig and freetype build just fine)

You're right though infinality is way better than my 'easy alternative'.

EDIT: It would be very appreciated if some debian geeks could do the job ;-)
“Have you tried turning it off and on again?”

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