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Default Fonts On Linux Turn People Off


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As you can see, when someone makes a comment about how linux fonts suck - people respond with things like "you can fix it by doing this, and then doing that, and then doing this, and then doing this after that". But that isn't the point.

The point is that linux fonts are ugly, out of the box, and most people don't have the patience to fix something that should have been right in the first place. Most people are judgemental when they first try an operating system out. People make assumptions and judgements - it is human nature.

Microsoft and MacOS get it right. At least on the desktop gui, I mean. When you fire up microsoft windows or MacOS for the first time in your life, you see clear fonts, and a clean, simple, gui. They get it.

Microsoft and MacOS might not know servers as well (welding the GUI to the server is naive) but microsoft and MacOS do get GUI's. They get fonts. They know that humans expect a clean, clear gui and not some blurry crooked gui. Linux doesn't get this. GTK doesn't get this. QT almost gets it but still doesn't get it.


Out of the box, linux turns people off. The fonts on LCD monitors especially are extremely blurry/crooked, with the exact same resolution settings as on Windows.

Programs that use GTK are bad. QT is better but still not clear like Windows.

Until these basic issues in linux are fixed, not many people will take it seriously as a desktop operating system.

The other issue I noticed immediately when using firefox on Linux is that the downloads suck up all the bandwidth. On Windows i can download a huge file and browse the internet at the same time. On linux the download sucks up all the bandwidth and I cannot browse the internet at even turtle pace.

I know these issues can be fixed by going into certain config files and maybe even recompiling the kernel (laughing out loud) but the fact is that out of the box linux is not good for a desktop right now. It's okay, but it isn't good. It's definitely not great.

Don't get me wrong - I use linux and bsd every day myself on my local servers and public web servers. But I'd like to see these issues for the desktop cleaned up with linux. It doesn't matter whether we can go into config files and fix these issues - what matters is what works out of the box - because people are lazy, even ambitious programmers who know what they are doing like to have a working, clean, and clear system out of the box.

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