https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1470509
--- Comment #6 from Kevin Kofler kevin@tigcc.ticalc.org --- I assume the new hinting engine has been tested with and optimized for anti-aliased rendering only. There are not many people still using non-anti-aliased fonts in 2007. They just always look pixelated.
If you think anti-aliased fonts are too blurry, try: 1. playing with the hinting level. The default is (was actually, for some reason, recently changed to) slight hinting. I use medium hinting, which gives a lot sharper fonts. Don't ask me why that is no longer the default. 2. trying out subpixel anti-aliasing with freetype-freeworld. That gives sharper anti-aliasing on almost all LCD monitors. (I think the horizontal RGB layout is the right one for most monitors. But if it doesn't look right, try the others.)