Okay, first, in case I forget it later: If you are running KDE-2.x and you have a ~/.kde/share/config/kdefonts, rename it at once! (Do not delete Linux configuration files until a few days after you've renamed them, when you're sure you don't need them. Give them very silly names, so that you'll be able to pick them out in case you need them after all. Names like "longpurplewhiskerskdefonts." It's a good idea to keep the original name in there so that you'll know what to name it back to if you need to do that.)

Second, make sure that you're not wasting your time, which is to say make sure that your video card is supported. If you're not running XFree86-4.02, you ought to be anyway if your video card is supported. If you are running it, open a terminal emulator and do xdpyinfo, which will provide all kinds of obscure information about your video system. Scroll through it until you find a section headed "number of extensions:" followed by a number. The extensions you have available are listed, in alphabetical order. If RENDER is among them, you've passed the first test.

(Here it can be a little complicated if you've not built your XFree from source. If you compile it yourself, you'll need to make sure your source tree's /xc/config/cf/host.def file contains a line pointing to the location of your Freetype2 installation, to wit:

#define Freetype2Dir /usr/local

This is the default location for Freetype2. It is included in the XFree distribution, but must be compiled separately. It's found in /xc/extras/freetype2. Go there, do make setup followed by make and, as root, make install. Then go ahead and build your XFree. The reason it's complicated if you haven't built it yourself is that you're at the mercy of whoever it was who built the binary packages you're using, who may or may not have done so with anti-aliasing in mind.)

Presuming XFree-4.02 or better, presuming the existence of Freetype2 on your machine, and presuming the existence of libXft on your machine (all of which can be confirmed by use of the locate command), and further presuming therefore that you found RENDER, the next step is to get rid of any font server you have running. This is a two-step process. First is looking at /etc/X11/XF86Config and finding any FontPath line that points to something like unix/:7100 or unix/:anythingelse. comment it out with a pound sign and a space afterwards -- remember, the idea is to do nothing irreversible. If you have lines that point to /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/truetype and /usr/X11R6/X11/fonts/Type1 visit the pound-space (# ) on them, too. While you're there, make sure that the Section'Module' section includes:

Load "type1"


Load "freetype"

Now. If your distribution was assembled by vicious morons, the FontPath lines will list nothing but your font server, rather than the proper method of including all the font directories, commented out. This would not be an enormous concern but for one essential; if you do not have it, then where you commented out the FontPath unix/:yadayada line, insert another line:

FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc"

In a multitude of experiments with anti-aliasing, I have not found a configuration that allows the elimination of this. Fact is, there are numerous FontPath lines you might want to leave. Here's the appropriate section from mine: