Hey there,
I've been distro hopping, well mainly debian based and I can't help but notice how poor the font rendering is compared to XP.
Fonts in sidux 2009.3 and Lenny 5.03 is as if it came from an ancient typewriter. Ubuntu 9.10 manages better, but doesn't still quite match the fonts from XP.
Fonts look particularly bad on Iceweasel.
Things I've done
1) Tried playing with hinting/dpi combinations - no luck
2) dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config
3) installed msttcorefonts
4) Changed iceweasel font settings , minimum font size etc.
5) Changed to slight/medium hinting
6) Every other "fix" that I found when googling debian's ugly fonts
I'm not sure if the threads on fonts get deleted regularly but I've found some topics dating back to 2007 and no one seem to have an answer for it. Anything else or commands that I can use to configure fonts in debian?
Now it could be that I'm used to the window's fonts so many of you linux purists would probably have used the same "ugly" fonts since the beginning and are therefore accustomed to it, hence do not see it as an issue.
Here are some screenshots to compare Sidux and Ubuntu fonts. Sidux and Lenny fonts look similar to each other so I only posted screenie from sidux. Both sidux and ubuntu are using the same Sans size 10 font with similar hinting/antialias settings.