If anyone cares:
$ sudo apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer
$ cd /etc/fonts/conf.d
$ sudo rm 10-hinting-slight.conf
$ sudo ln -s ../conf.avail/10-hinting-full.conf .
$ sudo ln -s ../conf.avail/10-sub-pixel-rgb.conf .
$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfigedit: I just looked at this thread again. I didn't fully scroll down and see that you already said it was Windows.
Ubuntu/Mac OS X both have distinctively different ways of font rendering. Windows' font rendering looks more readable (in my opinion), and OS X/Ubuntu's were designed for print.
I hastily put this together to better illustrate what I mean.
Anyway, some fonts look good at a specific size. I'm currently using the big size in the first picture and everything looks gorgeous.
I think the blurryfonts in the 3 imgur urls you've provided are way worse than what I see in Windows 7 and Mac OS X every day. They're somewhat misshapen and smudged-looking.
And by the way, those screenshots were, in order, Linux, OS X, Windows (default settings, font, browser zoom level, etc in each). But nice to see that confirmation bias is still alive and well. That's the whole reason I provided as much context as I did. I knew someone would reply with a comment like yours. Sad that I was right.
http://i.imgur.com/4dGbR.png
http://i.imgur.com/mfyjw.png
http://i.imgur.com/BqOdg.png
In fact, I would venture to guess you couldn't differentiate between Linux and Mac OS X (the Windows one is obvious), out of those three.
Again, the "visual style" of Wine is adaptable. winecfg allows you to use the uxtheme files that are used by Windows. There is even a uxtheme file that makes applications run in Wine look just like native Ubuntu applications.
Wine is great considering what it is. And anyone who understands what it does, has reasonable expectations for what it can do. They've effectively written their own implementation of Windows APIs to the point that Team Fortress 2 and the (current_version - 1) version of Office runs with little to no problems at all.
I love Wine. It lets me use self extracting ZIP files, small executables, small tools, old programs I wrote but don't have the source code for. I don't "enjoy" using it because I'd rather use a native app... but again, I'm really just not sure what you're expecting. It's not an emulator...
Anyone trying to use Visual Studio or AutoCAD in Linux (wine that is, I use Visual Studio in VirtualBox for my day job) is asking to be laughed at. Fortunately, there are half a dozen excellent virtualization technologies for Linux... and many competent replacements for Windows tools in the Linux world.