I have done an awful lot of distro-hopping, wrestling with bugs and general faffing since 2008. All three of my machines have Kubuntu 11.10 on them at present - a desktop pc, a laptop and an n450-equipped netbook, and I'm satisfied that KDE is the most polished and well-equipped DE of Linux. There are things that bug me about Ubuntu, Canonical and some of the Ubuntu family's users - I'm very wary of apparent alternative communities and lifestyles that are self-deceptive and not too adult. I'm 40 and a bit cheesed off with the prevalent drug-addled gamer kids making me wonder if I shouldn't just 'grow up and get a Mac'. I'd like to think that's not the answer.

At the same time I have not found a distro using KDE with font rendering as good as Kubuntu's current edition (I don't know if the last edition was when they 'solved' this as I didn't try 11.04 after 10.10 nearly fried my laptop). I've looked at Debian 6, the newest OpenSuse, Fedora and Mageia, and the fonts, with or without the usual setting changes, aren't useable in those. There is either the terrible colour fringeing which I associate with Ubuntu prior to 9.04, or the spidery look when using a word processor and Roman type fonts. Debian in particular makes me wonder if its makers don't go don the shops with their trousers and laces undone, they seem to have no awareness of scruffiness on the desktop. It seems odd also that as most of us haven't seen a CRT monitor for years defaults still seem geared up to them.

I mention font rendering specifically, and for me it is the most noticeable thing, but it is also kind of an index for general presentation and polish. But I'm writing a second book and I do need my good fonts - since Ubuntu 9.04 Linux has had, in theory, the best font rendering of all, better than Apple and MS undoubtedly, not that most distros have made the most of this.

I like the thought of OpenSuse, as it seems very polished in many regards too, like Kubuntu - it doesn't seem like the result of half an hour messing with Remastersys as some distros can. Maybe someone might assure me that things can be done about OpenSuse's fonts or something.

It just seems mysterious that even Kubuntu's fonts were two years getting corrected compared to Ubuntu. I'd like to think my enquiries and bug reports might have had a tiny bit of influence...

I'm not a young punk, I'd like to be able to get on with using my computers as tools and for entertainment and stop having to use forums so much. I had been thinking of going Windows again in the last few days but this evening once again I'm struck by how lovely and well-equipped KDE is - it's almost madness that it is free. But maybe I've overlooked a distro or two, or some techniques and practices to get KDE working and looking its best, though Kubuntu 11.10 is very close to perfection.

Thanks for all help and input.

There are a few KDE concentric distro's out there you didn't mention Mandriva, Pardus, PCLinuxOS and especially MINT which is *ubuntu based and should provide the same font experience you want.

In openSuse did you add the http://repos.opensuse-community.org/subpixel/ repo?

The Kubuntu fonts that are so desirable are they Ubuntu specific or just the way the standard fonts display? If it's the family it is available for dl and I assume installable on other distros http://font.ubuntu.com/download/ubuntu- ... y-0.80.zip

That's good, that sounds simple enough using that repository, maybe I can try it from a pendrive somehow.

All fonts look better in Kubuntu than in other distros with the subpixel antialising on and set to Slight, but in particular Roman type fonts - Times New Roman, Palladio, Sabon, etc - look on screen more like they would when printed out than they do in Debian KDE for example.

As far as I can tell, this is due to a specific Ubuntu patch to freetype.

I have to agree on the fonts looking amazing in ubuntu / kubuntu. I was always a bit weary of kubuntu as it might seem that it would be a second class citizen for conical.

But this is not so. The kubuntu team really delivered a rock solid beautiful distro with 11.10. I tried openSuse for a while but my machine got locked up often when using it. I used slackware as well but slackware's kde seems a lot slower compared to kubuntu.

But, the quality of the ubuntu repo's as well as the huge support base makes life very easy when you run into the odd issue here and there. But I have to confess I had absolutely no issues to date with kubuntu 11.10. It really is an amazing OS.