On Font Rendering
If you have ever wondered (as I have years ago ) why the text rendering on Linux usually looks inferior to both Mac OS X and Windows text, no matter how much you try and tweak the settings, there is a great and very in-depth article at http://www.antigrain.com/research/font_rasterization/index.html . It is quite long, but it contains excellent background information, theoretical and practical discussions of the concepts behind text rendering in general, what Windows and Mac OS do right/wrong and how to improve the situation in general. This is a must read for anyone remotely interested in font rendering.