Solaris has no font market because only sysadmins use it as a desktop anymore. Almost every Solaris box out there is either a server or a sandbox in some hobbyists collection. If there are leftover desktop Solaris users, they're doing scientific/medical work where fonts aren't especially important.

As for Linux... does anyone still take any part of the Linux desktop market seriously? In 2000 the Linux crowd couldn't shut up about how close they were to world domination, they're no closer now than they were then, and most people using desktop Linux are doing it for nerd cred, not because they care about fonts. I could see this being important if a few of the governments that keep threatening to move to Linux do so, or if the One-Laptop-Per-Child orders actually get filled (and don't end up running a stripped version of XP), but right now there's no point.

Regarding what Linux to use on a new Macbook, I'd go with XP unless you have some compelling reason to start running an OS that's widely regarded as needing more time in beta.

"As for Linux… does anyone still take any part of the Linux desktop market seriously?"

Those that use Linux do. Ubuntu has made a lot of headway this past year on pushing the linux desktop forward.

A recent survey (I wish I could find the source) stated that 30% of the corporations they interviewed are considering a switch to linux instead of upgrading to Vista. (for all I know, that might have been a survey sponsored by Ubuntu, I dunno. ;0)

"In 2000 the Linux crowd couldn’t shut up about how close they were to world domination, they’re no closer now than they were then"

Well, their market has grown. No idea how close they are to to completing their world domination plot.

"I could see this being important if a few of the governments that keep threatening to move to Linux do so"

Many have already made the declaration. Last week France just said parliament will be switching.

"Regarding what Linux to use on a new Macbook, I’d go with XP"

Huh?

"unless you have some compelling reason to start running an OS that’s widely regarded as needing more time in beta."

I have yet to meet an OS that doesn't need more time in Beta, no matter if the logo is a penguin, and apple, or a rainbow window.

Chris, thanks!

BTW: What's your policy?

Lauri, Darrel, and James: Thanks!

I imagine that a Gov bodies using Linux are not going to be big opportunities for Indie designers - unless one of them commissions something specific. I wonder if Suse is getting any fonts out of their deal with Microsquish...

Most modern Linux systems use FreeType to render OpenType and TrueType fonts. Depending on the graphic desktop (KDE, Gnome etc.) various other libraries are involved in the rendering text, especially in doing the line layout.

FreeType recently made major changes in the code that resulted in big differences in the screen rendering. Apparently, this is still not sorted out. Depending on the version of the system used, you may find large differences, and this is likely to continue in future versions of Linux systems.

A.

There is very little Linux software that would be useful to today’s designers.
The real problem IMO is the absence of a decent font manager for Linux. "Font Manager" is at version 0.0.1. And it's only a viewer at this point, not a manager. Hamster Font Manager appears to be abandoned. There's a hack that involves using OpenOffice.org's spadmin as a font manager.

Evidently, none of them cut it. So even if you manage to run most Adobe and formerly Macromedia apps over WINE, the lack of a font manager will be the eventual showstopper.

I've also used UFRaw, Dia, and of course FontForge. It's fun to try to "switch" for a little while. I find Scribus to be very frustrating, though.

On Ubuntu it is a bit of a pain to install new fonts. One has to either logout/login or run fc-cache.

"Xara Extreme"

Damn. No OSX version yet. I'm looking for a replacement for Freehand now that it's dead and I really don't want to deal with Illustrator. I'm warming up to Inkscape, though it's obviously not ready for print/prepress work yet.

Might be of interest: you can painlessly play around with KDE on a Windows machine using a free virtual machine and disk image available from here:

http://developer.kde.org/~binner/vmware/

No installation, dual boot or CD required.

In answer to the original question, Adobe does zero font testing on any flavor of Linux. The reality today is that there are multiple Linux environments that differ widely from each other in font handling. Then add in the low market share of Linux in general, particularly among creative professionals. Net result: I think it means that if a font works on Mac and Windows as well as passing spec-based tests that suggest it's well-formed, then it's up to your favorite flavor of Linux to handle the font.

Regards,

T

Lauri, got your instant message. Did you know your Profile says 'Lari'?

http://typophile.com/user/10077

'Lari Elovainio'

If you prefer for people to write back to you as something else you had better change your profile!

Cheers!

Yes Eben, Lari is my name. People sometimes mistakenly think my name is Lauri, which is quite a usual name here in Finland. Since you haven’t got finnish friends, I was wondering where you got that ‘U’ from.

Font system in Scribus has its own way to handle the way fonts are loaded.

It uses some libraries such as Freetype and Fontconfig but it's not similar to the rest of the system.

Scribus can use OTF fonts TTF or PS based, TTF, PS and I think MultipleMasters but I'm rather unsure. The only thing is: it does not natively embed/subsed OTF, but will convert text to path automatically with this kind of fonts (which is not that bad really). We unfortunately do not support advanced OpenType features as of yet, but as I told previously, it's planned for the next release, plus really cool stuff like customizable kerning tables and much more.

There is no native use of real OpenType features in KDE yet (I mean advanced tags). These days they are trying to get font loading fixed once and for all, IIRC the latest release breaks some stuff, but as everything in Linux, bugs don't tend to last long.

Again, the best way to see it fixed is report the shortcomings/bugs and/or fix it yourself (you can always get help), even though this requires programming skills.

Here's a recent discussion as to how Linux deals with fonts, pretty interesting read to anyone interested.

http://www.nabble.com/Font-management-programs-tf2762048r1.html

By customizable kerning tables I mean you will be able to correct the kerning of your fonts inside the program itself. Just like you would edit metrics but within Scribus.

Scribus' rendering is built on Cairo, I'm not 100% sure how it renders the text. I've already talked about it with the devs but I don't remember the details (I'm not a programmer but I do some design stuff).

By the way Scribus' devs are very easy to reach, they hang on all day on their IRC channel #scribus on Freenode the network.

Lauri! There you are! Do you have a Finnish background?

Scribus’ devs are easy to reach

Cool.

?

Eben,

Yep, I've got a Finnish background. My mom'a from Finland and I was named after her father.

:-)

ChrisL

Thanks--I hadn't yet seen the Linux version of XeTeX.