Binary package hint: gnome-control-center
Currently gnome-appearance-properties allows to choose the hinting style to use and the subpixel order.
However, the choice between the autohinter and bytecode interpreter often has an effect as significant as the hinting style choice, and thus I think it should be easily available as well.
It could be presented as:
Optimize fonts for on-screen readability
(.) Using the instructions in the font
(.) Using a generic algorithm
The LCD filter is another important option that is not graphically available. Ideally, it should be possible to actually choose the FIR filter variance with a slider, instead of having just a few preset settings: this requires freetype changes. Microsoft has a "ClearType tuner" tool that does something like this.
Additionally these settings should also be overridable per-font with the GUI, since many fonts need specific settings to look best, or are broken under settings that are otherwise good for most fonts.
A generic user-friendly editor for fonts.conf could be the way to go for this.
This bug is an upstream one and it would be quite helpful if somebody experiencing it could send the bug the to the people writing the software. You can learn more about how to do this at https:/