Font rendering config on Linux – What they didn't tell you

A side effect of fragmentation up and down the software stack. Neither OSX nor Windows have these specific problems because there is only one way (generally) it's done.

Not all of this is fork driven. Kde/gtk difference has been a thing forever. Wayland and X fragmentation however.. feels more .. avoidable?

Font smoothing and fonts in general are also bound in IPR and distros differ in how they cope with that.