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Restore sub-pixel font rendering in openSUSE 10.2 or 10.3.

Originally posted at http://opensuse-community.org/SubpixelHinting

How to enable subpixel hinting

Rebuild freetype2 with subpixel hinting

Note: the following commands must be executed using your regular non-root account

The following commands will download a source package for freetype2 and rebuild the binary RPMs with subpixel hinting enabled:

mkdir -p ~/download/freetype2
cd ~/download/freetype2
wget http://ftp.skynet.be/pub/suser-guru/rpm/experimental/packages/freetype2/src/freetype2-2.3.5-0.1.guru.suse102.src.rpm 
TARGET_OPT=`case \`uname -m\` in i*86) echo --target=i586;; esac`
rpmbuild --rebuild $TARGET_OPT --with subpixel freetype2-*.guru.suse*.src.rpm

At this point, there must be a lot of output, with rpmbuild building the source package. Note that rpmbuild might complain about missing dependencies (gcc, make, python, glibc-devel, autoconf, automake and libtool are required). If so, install the missing packages and run the two last lines again (TARGET_OPT=... and rpmbuild --rebuild ...).

When the build succeeds, you will end up with the binary freetype2 RPM packages in /usr/src/packages/RPMS/i586/ (32bit system) or /usr/src/packages/RPMS/x86_64/ (64bit system).

Upgrade to the subpixel hinting enabled freetype2 packages

Note: the following commands will require access to the root account (which means you have to know the password of the root user)

To upgrade to the subpixel hinting enabled freetype2 packages, do as follows:

su -
rpm --freshen -hv /usr/src/packages/RPMS/*/freetype2-*.rpm

Note: after the first line (su -), you will be prompted for the password of the root user, which is necessary to upgrade the RPM packages

If the preceeding rpm command does not work use the correct platform in the path. Below is an example for i586.

su -
rpm --freshen -hv /usr/src/packages/RPMS/i586/freetype2-*.rpm