Subpixel Shading in KDE

I recently redid the decorations on my desktop and laptop to make them look cool. You can see the screenshots here.

But there's something I've been overlooking: font smoothing. Font smoothing is all the rage now. People who have Macs claim that the screen is easier to read because it blurs the fonts slightly. The result is that you don't see the jagged edges of the text, it looks more like a printed page.

Well, Linux can do it too, of course. In fact, Linux can do it backwards or sideways. Do you want it slight, medium, or full? My answer: "How the hell should I know?" Unfortunately it won't give a side-by-side preview so I don't know what will happen when I click a certain button.

So for all of you who were wondering, here's a side-by-side comparison of the subpixel shading available with KDE:

This is how the text actually looked on my screen. However, sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between one option and another, so here's the same picture, double size:

Click on the picture to open it in a new window. Here you can see the differences between the different modes.

My recommendation: subpixel shading with hinting style: none. It's a little thicker but makes a screenfull of text look better. IMO.

J