On Mit, 2002-02-06 at 19:37, Morten Brix Pedersen wrote: > The default for XFree in Debian is to use a font server. My question is > why? > > I'm not an expert or anything, but I read somewhere that font servers > were good to remove the load from many machines; that is - if many > machines used the same font server. > > I believe most people who use XFree on Debian use it on single-user > systems, and the font server is only another hurdle to setup. > > The first thing I do when I have installed XFree4, is to comment out the > font server, remove it and load the freetype module. This gives me great > support for TrueType fonts and I only need to concentrate on > XF86Config-4 when setting up this machine.
The font servers also support TrueType fonts, and setting them up is very easy, I imagine the default configuration works for most people. > Sorry if this is a FAQ, but I have wondered about this for a long time. > > There may be other advantages with font servers which I have > overlooked. Yes. :) Several X servers on the same machine can use a single font server. And when using a font server, the X server doesn't block while rasterizing fonts. Just to name a few. -- Earthling Michel Dänzer (MrCooper)/ Debian GNU/Linux (powerpc) developer XFree86 and DRI project member / CS student, Free Software enthusiast
