Linked by Gilboa Davara on Thu 30th Jun 2005 12:29 UTC
If you've heard about Linux and feel like giving it a go or if you want to try Linux but you're too afraid it'll shew up your computer, this article is for you. Read it, feel free to take what you need and ignore the rest. This is not a tutorial, it's a README-FIRST-like article. It should help you to take that first dive.
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TTF fonts have hinting data embedded within them that was put there by the font artist; that is, instructions on how to slightly modify rendering at different sizes so that glyphs do not get distorted. AFAIK, this information and its use is proprietary to Apple.
Actually, Apple only has patents covering TrueType delta hints (diagonal hints). Freetype works fairly well with the bytecode interpreter off (thus no delta hints, default in most distributions) but you can sometimes see the difference in the thickness of diagonals on glyphs like W. It isn't really that much of a difference for most fonts.
The problem is lack of good fonts. Bitstream Vera Sans and Bitstream Vera Sans Mono are great typefaces for on-screen use, but lack many international characters. Microsoft, on the other hand, has many professionally designed typefaces with full pan-European character sets (Latin, Cyrillic, and polytonic Greek) and will be getting at least six more with Longhorn:
http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=47&aid=78683
They're actually finished now, and available at Ascender Corp.
http://www.ascendercorp.com/
Apple licenses many well-known typefaces, more than Microsoft (though they don't really have typefaces made for them).
Free Software, however, is stuck with only a few good designs with limited character sets. The Bitstream Vera collection doesn't even have enough characters to be used with many Latin-based European languages. A good on-screen serif typeface is also absent, while Microsoft and Apple have Georgia. Vera Serif does not even have an italic.
The old (and outdated) versions of Microsoft's web fonts can be downloaded and installed, though they can't be installed by default in many distributions, as they are not Free.