Font Smoothing in openSUSE

I have heard people commenting on how "ugly" openSUSE looks compared to the smoothness of Ubuntu. It's all relative one may argue, but having a pleasant UI matters to us who stare at the screen for long periods of time.

OOTB openSUSE doesn't do font smoothing or subpixel hinting due to freetype2's subpixel hinting implementation may infringe Microsoft's ClearType patents. This is why it is disabled both upstream (by the freetype2 authors) and in the freetype2 RPM packages that ship with openSUSE.

To solve this, we need to replace the default freetype2 RPM with a copy from the OBS.

Navigate to http://opensuse-community.org/SubpixelHinting

Follow the instructions to either do it from the CLI or 1-Click install.

openSUSE users may also click on this link to execute the YMP (YaST Meta Package) to kickstart the process.