I think I’ve finally got an Ubuntu font setup that I can live with. It’s not perfect, but it’s livable. Here’s what I did so I can replicate it if necessary.
- Install
msttcorefontspackage. - Install MS “Tahoma” and “Tahoma Bold” fonts, neither of which are included with
msttcorefonts. - Set X server to 96x96DPI.
- Install a custom
.fonts.confthat disables anti-aliasing for smaller fonts, sets some font prefs, and enables sub-pixel rendering. - In Firefox, go to Edit->Content->Fonts & Colors->Advanced. Set Proportional font to “Sans Serif”, Size 14pt. Set Serif font to “Times New Roman”. Set Sans-Serif font to “Verdana”. Set Monospace to “Courier New” at 12pt.
I’m pretty sure that’s it. Further references may be found in other posts in this category.
The overall result is a very Microsoft-y look, probably because of the heavy use of the Tahoma font. Some fonts are a little too small, others are a little to big (the default font in Firefox, for one). But, I can live with this until I go to a Mac on my desktop. It took a bit of tweaking, but it definitely looks nicer than my old vanilla Debian setup.
Followup 8/15.. The menu fonts in OpenOffice.org were still kinda ugly after doing all this.. I fixed this by going to Tools->Options->OpenOffice.org->View, and unchecking “Use system font for user interface.” Then when I restarted, the menus came up in Tahoma. Problem solved.
Followup 1/11/07: Installed Firefox 2 and found things required some additional tweaking. Changed Sans-Serif font from Verdana to Arial. Changed proportional font size to 16pt and fixed font size to 14pt. Re-enabled anti-aliasing for smaller fonts. Not sure I’m 100% happy with it, but it’s tolerable.