Zac's Guide to Prettifying FreeBSD
My setup is running KDE 3.3.0 on X11 version 4. I have an up-to-date installation of FreeBSD 5.2.1-RELEASE
After finding a lot of issues with the base fonts in FreeBSD, I stumbled across a few good web sites with information on making your desktop much prettier.
Step 1: Install Some Nice Fonts
- Create a directory: /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType
- Copy any regular True Type fonts into this directory that you want to use. Windows uses True Type fonts, so you could copy your \Windows\Fonts directory straight into our new TrueType directory and have a pretty good set of fonts to use.
- Remove or rename any fonts with spaces in their name. The font server doesn't like spaces in the file names and will complain.
- Set the fonts up for the font server:
# cd /usr/ports/x11-fonts/ttmkfdir # make install clean # rehash # cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType # ttmkfdir > fonts.dir
- Under the "Modules" section in your XF86Config, add the line:
Load "freetype" - Restart X to reload the new configuration.
- Add the fonts to the font server:
# xset fp+ /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TrueType
If this step generates an error, it's probably related to spaces in the file names of a font. - Rebuild the hash table:
# xset fp rehash
At this point, all your Windows fonts should now be available through any of the system font menus. I used KDE's font manager to change all my fonts to something a little more plain (Arial and Verdana). Also, your monospace fonts will probably improve a bit as well.
Step 2: Adjust Font Resolution on Startup
% startx -dpi 100
Step 3: Turn off Anti-Aliasing for Flat Panel Monitors
Edit /usr/X11R6/etc/fonts/local.conf so it contains these overrides:
<?xml version="1.0"?> <!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd"> <fontconfig> <match target="font"> <test qual="all" name="rgba"> <const>unknown</const> </test> <edit name="rgba" mode="assign"> <const>rgb</const> </edit> </match> </fontconfig>