@phenomlab Been long time since I used any DE but I would think they would still respect $XDG_HOME/fontconfig/fonts.conf, no? Or maybe Gnome3 over rides it? Hmm… seem to recall some such nonsense…
The latest and greatest freetype and opentype engines are great, howsomever, so I am nowadays hard pressed to improve upon the default anti-aliasing, hinting, subpixel alignment, etc. to tweak fonts into looking better. Whereas not too many years ago such was derigeur.
All else that is left in the chain is hardware side: gpu and display. I’m on a mid range amdgpu and an Eizo main display w/a dot pitch of .23. So that is pretty nice. Not 4K/5K but plenty of K to be a A-Okay with me.
So from there it pretty much breaks down to subjective stylistic choices: I like slashed zeros but can put up with dotted zeros if the rest of the glyphs trip my triggers. I doubt, however, I could get by without doghouse g’s.
And other stuff like that font side.