If your Linux fonts look like a hungover Sunday morning—slightly blurry and just not quite right—don’t panic. You can get them crisp and clean by tweaking a single environment variable, just open /etc/environment and add the following line, then reboot:

FREETYPE_PROPERTIES="cff:no-stem-darkening=0 autofitter:no-stem-darkening=0"

What’s Happening Here?

Freetype’s "stem darkening" tries to thicken fonts slightly, supposedly making them look better at small sizes. But if you’re noticing fuzziness, turning it off is like opening the blinds—suddenly, everything’s sharper. The :no-stem-darkening=0 flag simply tells Freetype, “No, thank you. We like our fonts as they are.”

And that’s it! Cleaner letters, happier eyes.