Linux Fonts.A fix for Mr Scoble?

There is a discussion going on at Robert Scoble’s blog about how ugly Linux fonts are, and that most people reject Linux based OS’s because of their ugly font rendering.

Now please don’t get me wrong, I completely agree with Scoble. Linux’s font rendering truly sucks. Forget grown-ups, even kids rate Linux ugly because of this reason.

So, who is responsible for this state of affairs? You may think that the people who make and distribute these Linux operating systems, like Redhat, SUSE, Ubuntu, Mandriva, Debian, Linspire etc are at fault here.

You are wrong.

The short answer is Apple. They hold certain patents which prevents Freetype (Linux’s Font Rasterizer) from turning ON it’s “Bytecode Interpreter”, and hence all true type fonts on Linux, apper ugly. Even if you copy Microsoft’s free web fonts like Arial,Verdana and all, they will still look ugly, simply because of the fact that Linux does not know how to draw them correctly.

Now the long answer. Both Apple and Microsoft have this “Bytecode Interpreter” thing ON, in their respective operating systems, which is why their font rendering is so crisp and clear. In Fact Microsoft bought Apple’s patents, as part of a cross licensing agreement, sometime back. Freetype which along with X-Server and Font Server are responsible for Linux’s font rendering, is an open source project, and therefore could not buy out Apple’s patents. So they did the next best thing possible. They wrote an Auto-Hinting algorithm which when combined with Anti-Aliasing, produces just about readable text. However the truth is, that for most people, this is still not good enough.

If you like me would like to change this, and make your Linux fonts look like Windows or MAC, continue reading.

There are basically three obstacles to overcome

1. Installing Microsoft fonts like Arial,Verdana,Time New Roman,Courier New etc on to your Linux box.
2. Enabling “Bytecode Interpreter” in Freetype.
3. Asking KDE and GNOME applications to use fonts like Arial, Verdana and Tahoma rather than the default Bitstream Vera family.

If you are using Ubuntu, step1 is easy. Just download and run easyubuntu . Apart from mp3 and wmv codecs, easyubuntu also gets Microsoft’s core fonts for you. The only font not included with core fonts is Tahoma. Go to your home folder. Check if a folder by the name of .fonts exists. If not create one, then copy and paste tahoma.ttf and tahomab.ttf from your C:WindowsFonts directory to this .fonts directory.

For step2 and 3, follow this wonderfully written guide . Beware of the fact, that by enabling “Bytecode Interpreter” you may be infringing on Apple’s Patents. This of course depends on whether such US Patents are legally applicable in your country or not. If they are, don’t try this at home

What I said about Redhat,SUSE,Ubnutu and likes not being responsible, is not entirely true. These vendors could do what Microsoft has done, and buy Apple’s patents. They could then supply a patched version of FreeType with the “Bytecode Interpreter” enabled. If Redhat can buy out JBoss, then they can surely buy 3 patents from Apple. Wether Apple would sell, is a different story altogether.

PS: Some screenshots of my Ubuntu 1.Netbeans Matisse 2. IntelliJ 3. JEdit running on JDK1.6 4. Firefox 5. Nautilus