Ugly fonts in Debian

Some tips on making the default font config more palatable.

Disable bitmap fonts

I have a respect for good bitmap fonts, like misc-fixed-medium-r. But when bitmap fonts aren't monospaced, they start to get painful very quickly.

When the text becomes small, it becomes painful

You can disable bitmap fonts by doing:

      # cd /etc/fonts/conf.d
      # ln -s ../conf.avail/70-no-bitmaps.conf

Disable Nimbus Sans

For some reason, someone thinks that Nimbus Sans is a replacement for Helvetica. They are wrong, on many levels, especially as the on-screen kerning of Nimbus Sans is extremely wonky on Debian.

The broken kerning on Nimbus makes text ugly

Grab a copy of 70-no-nimbus.conf and install it in /etc/conf.avail/.

      # cd /etc/fonts/conf.d
      # ln -s ../conf.avail/70-no-nimbus.conf

"Helvetica" now matches Bitstream Vera Sans - much better!