I don't think I've ever noticed anything too strange with font rendering in Windows. Can you (calmly) explain what you're talking about?

Not the parent poster, but basically, they dropped RGB subpixel rendering, and now use plain anti-aliasing for all font sizes. They may have changed hinting and anti-aliasing parameters, too. No difference on a HiDPI screen, since you don't need subpixels there, but on standard definition screens many find it looks a bit blurrier (me included).

Supposed benefits are that it is easier to render text on colored backgrounds (you can just render with alpha to a buffer and combine it with the background, with RGB subpixel rendering you have to consider the background while drawing), and you can scale text without color artifacts.

To be honest, we have plenty of computing power today, and our GPUs are underutilized most of the time anyway. I wonder why we can't just have RGB subpixel aware rendering of everything (not just text, but also lines and polygons) implemented as a kind of shader pass. Render everything at 3x horizontal resolution, and merge using an appropriate shader. And if you have a HiDPI screen, just drop the shader.

It's actually not possible to accurately composite subpixel AA using the GPU since you can't configure blends per-channel. To do it accurately, you need three different alpha channels.

It is actually possible to do using a feature called dual source blending, which unfortunately is so rarely used that drivers tend to fail to implement it properly. But it does give you the possibility to use 3+ alpha channels with full hardware acceleration, at some memory cost.

Though since DPIs are going up and 3 alpha channels is such an unusual thing, I guess they just figured it wasn't worth the trouble.

The font rendering was my biggest beef with Windows, I like them smooth while most Windows users seem to prefer sharp. I used to use GDI++, then MacType, for over 5 years until two years ago I switched over to OSX. I have been quite happy since then.

Yeah I noticed this the other day. I couldn't believe the fonts looked so terrible. This is coming from a Fedora user where we typically put up with lots of complaints about fonts.

Using Windows at work, and Fedora at home, the font rendering on Windows always drives me crazy. My monitor at work is kind of awful, but the font rendering just doesn't have to be as bad as it is.

Exactly. BTW It is not the fonts makes me crazy. It is much broader than that. It is culture behind it. Lock people up, then you have freedom to what do you want to do.

If there was a serious competitor in desktop they wouldn't dare to ignore their current user in pursue of new users.

Yeah well I use linux 99.9% of the time for a reason.

There's nothing dealbreaking about the platform for me, well there's hardly even anything nagging about it.

There's something called MacType (I don't personally use it).

Yeah, I know, Sadly doesn't work with the new engine.