I spent 5 hours yesterday night scouring through the internet to find how I can make chinese fonts display nicely in Ubuntu. Chinese fonts in Firefox in Edgy is so badly rendered that it is practically impossible to see. (I don't have a screenshot, I'll upload a shot on my laptop which I haven't fixed yet when I get the chance).

While I was at it, I found an article which also improves font rendering on Ubuntu distribution so that it renders font a bit like the MAC OSX. I followed the guide and produced my own version of the local.conf located /etc/fonts/ which sets local font settings. This file does not exist in Ubuntu Edgy out of the box so you'll have to create it. Here is how you can improve the font rendering of english, chinese and japanese.

Go to:
Systems -> Preferences -> Font

Select:
Details..

Choose - Smoothing:
Subpixel (LCDs)

Choose - Hinting:
None

Click Close twice.

Type in command line
sudo gedit /etc/fonts/local.conf

copy and paste the content of my local.conf

Save and restart X by pressing CTRL-ALT-Backspace

Viola, enjoy.

note: This can also be applied to Korean I suspect and any other character sets that are being rendered badly. Just add the font name of the language you want to the string list, following the format under where it says "Disable font alias for Chinese"

Need a new CPU or graphics card? Get AMD.