The sad state of font rendering on Linux

To get Windows-like rendering that I prefer, anti-aliasing, sub-pixel rendering, sub-pixel positioning and font hinting based on byte code embedded into fonts – basically, every step of the technological progress made in the last 30 years – need to be active. Since Windows never had the font rendering problems that Apple did, majority of the computer market share didn’t back the ultra-expensive 4K screens even to this day (2018). They all are broken in the same way:

There is a pixel or less of extra space between kerning pairs and the problem grows exponentially when letter-spacing values are fiddled with:

Before someone jumps in and says “stop using Microsoft fonts”, here is the exact same behaviour exhibited when rendering Liberation Sans, the font most commonly recommended to replace standard web ones:

This is because for a very long time Linux did not support the sub-pixel grid at any level and a lot of assumptions were made.

Source: pandasauce.org