James John – Software Engineer

Smoothing Fonts in GTK Apps in KDE

Smooth font is one the sleek things I like in graphics, even in my IDEs. Without them; there’s nothing I admire in a view. Moved to Fedora some time last week and I had to reinstall KDE – my favourite desktop, I lost my configurations because I needed a new and fresh install.

I found out that this method doesn’t work anymore, not sure if it’s related to Debian. Now lets smooth up our GTK fonts! We need to configure our Anti-aliasing and install some font rendering engines.

What is Anti-Aliasing?

It’s a technique used to add greater realism to a digital image by smoothing jagged edges on curved lines and diagonals.

Setting Font Anti-Aliasing in Plasma

Installing Font Rendering Engine

The one that worked for me was freetype-freeworldwhich you can install with:

$ sudo dnf install freetype-freeworld

Restart or relogin to your Linux and find your smooth GTK fonts in KDE.

James John

Software Engineer