Better Ubuntu Fonts

"I also like Windows fonts much better than the defaults on any Linux distributions. Well, at least the Windows XP default, Tahoma. (Also, I prefer no antialiasing at all for small font sizes, when using good TrueType fonts. Your mileage may vary!)

These days I find it very easy to get nice fonts in Ubuntu. (Gone are the days of needing to recompile Freetype with a certain option (I forget which) to get them right.)

Steps I took when last installing Ubuntu afresh

Put your TrueType fonts (.ttf files from Windows installation or e.g. the Microsoft Core Fonts package legally available on the web) in some directory, e.g. /usr/local/winfonts.
Edit /etc/fonts/local.config and add your winfont dir:

<?xml version=""1.0""?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM ""fonts.dtd"">
<!-- /etc/fonts/fonts.conf file to configure system font access -->
<fontconfig>
<!-- Font directory list -->
<dir>/usr/local/winfonts</dir>
<dir>/usr/share/X11/fonts/misc</dir>
</fontconfig>

Run sudo fc-cache -fv to rebuild font information cache files. (Nowadays there's no need to create files like fonts.scale, fonts.dir or fonts.alias using ttmkfdir or other utilities!)

Then configure Tahoma 8 as the default font in your desktop environment (KDE's control centre for me; equally easy in the Gnome equivalent)

And that's it.

Alternative way

Another way is to simply install msttcorefonts package from Universe and run fc-cache, as instructed in this post on Ubuntu Blog.

The core fonts package doesn't include Tahoma though. But if you have it from other sources, copying the .ttf files to ~/.fonts/ (or /usr/local/share/fonts for system wide availability) before running fc-cache should be sufficient."

I do recommend enabling Sub-pixel smoothing, makes it much easier on your eyes. Unfortunately, Firefox doesn't seem to use sub pixel smoothing, atleast for me.

"I use Bitstream Vera fonts on Firefox. It's still not as good as it looks on Windows, but its a whole lot better than how it used to look.

This is what Wikipedia has to say:

Vera is a typeface (font) with a
liberal license. It was designed by
Jim Lyles from Bitstream, and is
closely based on Bitstream's Prima,
for which Lyles was also responsible.
It is a TrueType font with full
hinting instructions, which improve
its rendering quality on
low-resolution devices such as
computer monitors.

Although Vera itself covers only
common punctuation and the Latin
alphabet with some diacritics, its
license allows others to make and
distribute derivative works with some
restrictions, and the DejaVu fonts
project is expanding it with
additional glyphs and styles. With
over 80% installation base, the DejaVu
fonts have been gaining on the role as
sans-serif default fonts in GNU/Linux.
On Windows and Macintosh systems,
DejaVu is however practically unknown,
whereas Bitstream Vera Sans has
installation bases of 25% and 20%
there, and 79% on Unix, according to a
survey.

Below is a screenshot of how Firefox looks with this font. Sub-pixel smoothing is also enabled."

"Recent solution (2020)
sudo pico /etc/fonts/conf.d/20-no-embedded.conf

paste this in /etc/fonts/conf.d/20-no-embedded.conf
<?xml version=""1.0""?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM ""fonts.dtd"">
<fontconfig>
<match target=""font"">
<edit name=""embeddedbitmap"" mode=""assign"">
<bool>false</bool>
</edit>
</match>
</fontconfig>

Source: www.reddit.com/r/Fedora/comments/dzg74b/bad_small_font_rendering_with_microsoft_fonts/
It is probably better to stay away from MS fonts in possible and find standard replacementent for each font. Although this requires manual work and some fonts (e.g. Corbel) do not have well defined replacements AFAIK."