I used the answers to this question to tune the subpixel font hinting in the Unity interface. However, the text rendered inside Firefox , Chrome or evince doesn't use subpixel anti-aliasing. Sadly these three applications are the one which need it the most.
Subpixel font hinting is enabled almost everywhere else.
How to activate it for these applications ?
Firefox seems not to read the GTK configuration, but it does will honor your ~/.fonts.conf which basically contains the font configuration, including the sub-pixel order.
This is an example .fonts.conf which comes from a 2005 blog post which may help out, what you most likely want to change is the rgba value (sub-pixel order) to match your LCD and maybe the antialias value.
<?xml version='1.0'?> <!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM 'fonts.dtd'> <fontconfig>
<match target="font">
<edit mode="assign" name="autohint">
<bool>false</bool>
</edit>
</match>
<match target="font">
<edit mode="assign" name="rgba">
<const>rgb</const>
</edit>
</match>
<match target="font">
<edit mode="assign" name="hinting">
<bool>true</bool>
</edit>
</match>
<match target="font">
<edit mode="assign" name="hintstyle">
<const>hintfull</const>
</edit>
</match>
<match target="font">
<edit mode="assign" name="antialias">
<bool>true</bool>
</edit>
</match> </fontconfig>
