What I mean is that after the graphics have been rasterized, there's no way for the OS to detect which pixels have been adjusted for sub pixel detailing. It's not a knock on Linux. It's just not possible.
Oh but nobody ever disputed that a subpixel-rendered RGB picture would not look good on a BGR screen ; )
What you just wrote is quite different than your cryptic:
"subpixel graphics detailing isn't translatable by Linux" ; )
And Linux fonts look terrible next to Windows equivalents. I've done a lot of tweaking and tuning on Ubuntu, and there's no way to correct it. It's just not as good.
OK thread is seriously derailing now but I suspect you tried to tweak and tune default Linux fonts (whatever that means, because "default" Linux fonts change from one distro to another, from one year to another, depending on who gives which font for free, on what gets included, etc.). I take fonts from my Windows systems (I should try from my Mac, never tried that yet), copy them on my Linux system and then I tweak and tune them.
Here's the Geek Hack website subpixel rendered on Linux (on the left) next to ClearType (Windows) on the right. I've always found that ClearType was a bit blurry, especially when it's not "black on white". On the screenshot I took my sig on this very site and your paragraph (Firefox/Linux vs IE/Windows), for comparison:
I think it's a matter of opinion but saying "
It's just not as good" is probably a bit strong.
That's why you also need to precise what you mean by "
next to Windows equivalents". If you mean "default windows sans-serif" vs "default Linux sans-serif" then, depending on your distro, yes, the default sans-serif (and serif even more) can certainly look fugly (it used to be terrible, nowadays I think most distro ship with sane default fonts, thankfully : )
But then nothing prevents you from taking your own paid-for Windows fonts (the one you got when you bought Windows) and putting them on your Linux system. For example I like Tahoma. I think Tahoma, for a lot of usage, is really nice. Hence I always add Tahoma to my Linux systems.
That said back on topic: who's making us a nice old-school G80-5000 rendered in its fully split state ?
P.S: I remember surfing on Linux in the nineties with the old Netscape, now
that was a visually traumatizing experience ; )