[KenJackson]

Ever since I upgraded my Mandriva system to 2008.0.0, some web sites, including this one, look bad in firefox. The main font--including the one I see as I'm typing--is not smoothed. It looks like it was printed on a dot matrix printer. (Although it looks good in Konqueror.)

I think it is Lucida or Lucida Grande. These used to look good before the upgrade, but now they look bad.

I recommend against using them.

[MikeTbob]

Try this fix, it works for more than just Debian.
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/deb...ts-debian.html

[KenJackson]

Very interesting. I don't have a ~/.font.conf file on either my Mandriva or Xubuntu system. That seems to have been replaced with files in the ~/.fontconfig directory.

Grepping through all these files, I see lots of entries for various Lucida fonts (Lucida, LucidaBright, LucidaTypewriter, LucidaBrightDemiBold, etc.). But there is no Lucida Grande or simiar.

strings ~/.fontconfig/* | grep -i grand

But I saved the recommended ~/.font.conf file anyway, so whenever I get a chance to exit all my browser tabs (hopefully sometime this month), I'll restart X and see if it made a difference.

[MikeTbob]

I didn't have one either, so I created it and it works for me.
Let us know how it goes for you too.

[KenJackson]

OK, I copied that .font.conf file to my home directory and rebooted my system (since I was upgrading the kernel anyway). It made no difference.

The font on this page still looks like something out of the middle '90s.

[MikeTbob]

look in your home directory with this command to see if maybe you have a font.conf by another name, I have .fontconfig and font.conf
cd ~ && ls -la |grep font

[KenJackson]

Is that font.conf or .font.conf?
Also, isn't .fontconfig a directory loaded with mysterious -x86.cache-2 files?

[MikeTbob]

should be .font.conf and you are right, .fontconfig is a directory.
Here is a pretty good looking tutorial for Mandriva fonts.
Fonts On X