Dec 23 2015: This guide is now declared to be too old but still usable, see here.
So, let's see this Infinality thing in action. Everybody talks about it and I wanted to try it out, finally. I read really nice things on their site.
If you are still bored with your default font configuration or not happy with my first part then I have a surprise. I will tell you how to get Infinality debianized properly.
Side note: It will also get rid of the deprecated fonts.conf that the system always complains about when you start apps from the terminal, you can fix this by changing the directories but now let's talk Infinality and forget about my first part. ;)
I assume you have already git installed because we will build it from source. As usual there is no Debian package and won't happen in the near future, guess it, licensing issues.
Though, if you use another distro, grab it from here.
I will use this repository.
First we need the dev packages, I will use sudo here because I have it set up on this machine, adjust for su usage:
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sudo apt-get install build-essential docbook-to-man libx11-dev x11proto-core-dev libz-dev quilt debhelper pdebuild-cross devscripts
Side note: After you finished everything you can remove the dev packages if you are concerned about disk space.
Now clone the git repo:
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git clone https://github.com/chenxiaolong/Debian-Packages.git
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cd Debian-Packages/
cd freetype-infinality/
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dpkg-checkbuilddeps
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cd ../fontconfig-infinality/
dpkg-checkbuilddeps
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cd ../freetype-infinality/
./build.sh
cd ../fontconfig-infinality/
./build.sh
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cd ..
sudo dpkg -i freetype-infinality/*.deb fontconfig-infinality/*.deb
Log out and back in or reboot if you think so. You will be surprised, the fonts are crisp, beautiful and still nice aliased and hinted. They are indeed crispier than with my first method. But that is not all. We will now make some adjustments as described here, I did it my way and am uber happy with the results.
First, remove the fonts thingie from your .Xdefaults, it is not needed anymore or if you have no need for .Xdefaults/.Xresources, get rid of them:
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Xft.autohint: 0
Xft.antialias: 1
Xft.hinting: true
Xft.hintstyle: hintslight
Xft.dpi: 96
Xft.rgba: rgb
Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault
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sudo bash /etc/fonts/infinality/infctl.sh setstyle
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sudo -H vi /etc/profile.d/infinality-settings.sh
Now one thing you need to have in mind, disable all the GUI configuration settings for fonts from your desktop environment if you use one, they are now useless or will interfere.
If you need more tweaking, look again at the forums post above from Infinality how to adjust fonts in other distros.
I am really pleased with the results and they are globally, no tweakings needed anymore, no special attention for root applications, it is already done.
Of course, if you want the Microsoft or Apple rendering, you would need to have their fonts installed. I did not try this and won't as I have no MS fonts installed.
This guy or woman :) is really a freak. Forget about Ubuntu font rendering, this is even better, your milage may vary but you know me, I am a font fanatic.
Use this how-to at your own risk. I am not responsible for any breakage this procedure could implicate.