I wonder why because Linux only has a 1% market share on the desktop. This shows that MS is very worried about Linux on the desktop. Microsoft’s pulling the free fonts from its download area is a very petty move which will be remembered, moreso than some heineous crimes MS has committed. Maybe that’s just me, but this has caused me to favor full screen terminal editors over X editors so far. On the other hand I find the standard console fonts for linux easy to read and well-proportioned.
Yuck! Also, simpler naming conventions for linux fonts would encourage developers to show more taste in the font specifications in their applications. Lucida typewriter is a much nicer fixed font, but so many apps specify “fixed” or default to “courier”. I find it hard to believe that someone could not design a more attractive font that “fixed”, for example. What’s so hard about designing attractive, easy to read fonts for linux? True Type and anti-aliasing issues aside (which have now been solved in the major distributions) the standard set of X11 bitmapped fonts for linux leaves much to be desired.
