• Old font subsystems: This is the original (15-20 year old) subsystem. This is normally referred to as the "core X font subsystem", and the fonts are handled by the X server, which means no anti aliasing (i.e. no nice pretty and smooth fonts).
• New font subsystem: This new system is known as "fontconfig", and allows applications to render anti aliasing fonts on screen with the help of the "Xft" library.
• Anti aliased fonts: Enabling anti aliased fonts, and an example of anti aliased fonts

You can the tell different font subsystems apart because the old system uses long and cryptic names like:

-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--10-100-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1

Where fontconfig uses "human-readable" names like:

Luxi Sans-10

Fontconfig/Xft will eventually replace the old system. Currently any applications using QT version 3.x or GTK+ version 2.x uses fontconfig/Xft, most other applications uses the old system.

Also check my guide to configuring the X server.

You can use the Truetype fonts that come with Windows. You can either get them from this site or you can just copy the fonts from your Windows installation (shame on you) from C:\windows\fonts\ to a directory of your liking (e.g. /usr/share/fonts/ttf/)

Enter the directory and run ttmkfdir > fonts.scale, and then run mkfontdir.

Finally you have to add the path to the directory in which you installed the fonts to the "Files" section of you X config file, e.g. /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 or /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/ttf"

This is if you use X to handle your fonts, if you instead use XFS (X font server) add this to your catalogue section of /etc/X11/fs/config:

/usr/share/fonts/ttf

Make sure that X also loads the "freetype" module. After X has been restarted you should be able to view the fonts with xfontsel.

For more information:

Adding new fonts to the fontconfig font subsystem is much more simple. Just copy the fonts into the directory of you choice (e.g. /usr/share/fonts/ttf/ or ~/.fonts) and add the path to /etc/fonts/local.conf or you personal ~/.fonts.conf like this:

<dir>/usr/share/fonts</dir>
<dir>~/.fonts</dir>

(no need for the last part of the path)

Finally you have to run: fc-cache -v /usr/share/fonts/ttf/ (or where you installed your fonts).

You might want to configure Xft to your personal taste. Xft version 1 uses ~/.XftConfig and /etc/X11/XftConfig. Xft version 2 uses ~/.fonts.conf and /etc/fonts/fonts.conf, but edit /etc/fonts/local.conf because fonts.conf is overwritten each time fontconfig is upgraded.

For more information:

If you want to have anti aliased fonts, your graphics card has to support the Render extension of X. To check this run xdpyinfo | grep -i render in a console, you should get

RENDER

It should be enabled on every new system by default, but if you don't get anti aliased fonts try to set two variables, one for QT (KDE) and one for GTK+ 2 (you can also use the variables to disable anti aliasing):

export QT_XFT=true
export GDK_USE_XFT=1

If you have a LCD display, you might what to have a look at subpixel anti aliasing (see below for resources).

For more information: