Fedora doesn't have rgba lcdfilter by default, due to Cleartype patents. It does have antialiasing.

You can resolve that by installing freetype-freeworld package (which has exactly the same freetype library, just with one #define flipped), that is offered by some repositories, or you can get a HiDPI display. Which, if the reading/writing text is important to you, you will want anyway.

Haven't the patents on the hinting stuff expired now? I'm sure I heard that somewhere.

Patent problems are not with hinting, but with RGBA filtering (Microsoft calls it Cleartype). Hinting is fine in Fedora.

As another software developer, I haven't noticed or cared about fonts in about 20 years. 20 years ago font rendering was sometimes bad. The last 20 years? I guess not or I would have noticed. Seems like whatever the defaults are on Fedora+Awesome, they're fine.

I've basically only noticed or cared about fonts when I'm on a windows computer or a poorly configured linux computer. Windows's hinting drives me nuts.

Yeah, caring about fonts when doing "code" sounds like a tell for "i am a web designer doing JS".

It's the kind of thing that's largely up to personal preference, people that spent a long time with Windows font rendering have a hard time adjusting to the old Freetype2. The newest Freetype2 integrated the infinality patches which make the rendering much easier on the eyes for those people.

Distrowatch says Fedora 25 uses an older Freetype2, I think the patches are available to toggle on.

What are you using then? I'm curious about which distro best handles font rendering.

I did use Gentoo and Arch for a year or two, but right now I do use Ubuntu LTS. I don't have enough time to deal with broken packages when I update, so I stick to the LTS.