Fonts in Linux

[Rick Bull]

My fonts in Linux Mandrake (KDE or Gnome) look pretty crappy compared to Windows, is that the same for everyone, or is there something I can do to make them look better. They just look pretty jagged and not clean like Windows.

[Rick Bull]

So I assume no one else has this problem (or everyone does and you're not admitting it )? I just got the Internet to work and I noticed it's not just the font, graphics in general are dogdy. I saw some animated GIFs that were jumping to the left/right and looking strange.

[zmerlinz]

what browser were you using ?? things look fine to me when using mozilla

[Rick Bull]

I was using Mozilla, but it's not just Mozilla, it's Linux in general.

[Wynd]

If memory serves, do something like this (all as root):

Edit your /etc/X11/XF86Config file and add a line in the font section to point to the dir where your fonts are. If you're dual booting, you can use the folder on your Windows partition.

Then:
$ cd /path/to/fonts
$ ttmkfdir > fonts.scale
$ mkfontdir

[Rick Bull]

Alright, so this is the text currently in my file:

Section "Files"
    # Multiple FontPath entries are allowed (they are concatenated together)
    # By default, Mandrake 6.0 and later now use a font server independent of
    # the X server to render fonts.
    FontPath "unix/:-1"
EndSection

So can you help me edit it to point to those files (I'm totally new to Linux)?

[Wynd]

This is assuming you dual boot with Windows 9x/ME and your Windows directory is mounted under /mnt/windows (I think mandrake does this automatically, change that path if needed):

Section "Files"
    # Multiple FontPath entries are allowed (they are concatenated together)
    # By default, Mandrake 6.0 and later now use a font server independent of
    # the X server to render fonts.
    FontPath "unix/:-1"
    FontPath "/mnt/windows/windows/fonts/"
EndSection

If you have an NT-based Windows OS, change "windows" in the path to "winnt". If you just downloaded some fonts somewhere, change the whole path (the part in quotes) to the directory where your downloaded your fonts.

[Rick Bull]

OK thanks I'll try that, and let you know.

[Rick Bull]

I did it, and it said something about a font not being GEM something or other (sorry for the vague description ). I think I'm just expecting too much of of Linux. Thanks for the help anyway.

[Wynd]

Who knows, fonts work fine for me.