[Fontconfig] What can Fonconfig really do for average user??

[Randy Burgess]

I am just starting to learn Linux, having struggled for the past two weeks
with my new SuSE 8.1 installation to get it to look less crappy in the font
department. Towards that end I have installed the latest release candidate
version of Free86, along with KDE 3.1 and QT 3.1. Fonts in KDE and Opera
6.11 look better now, though still not up to the caliber of MS Windows;
fonts in Mozilla look worse than before for some reason, but that's OK since
Opera is so much better than Mozilla anyway.

My question is - for a beginning Linux user, is Fontconfig worth the
trouble? Will it help me get a better-looking font display than that which I
can achieve with the setup described above? If so, how?! Does it somehow
enable otherwise unused capabilities for a more attractive display, or is it
merely a means (or potential means, even worse) of fine-tuning what is
already there? Is it something that's better left alone my folks like me
until people like KDE start providing a GUI interface to it? I have read the
existing descriptions, and looked at the FAQ, but they are written at too
high a technical level to address such basic questions. Perhaps all of this
is obvious to XFree86 devotees, but it's not to anyone walking in on it
cold. I have done some Python and PHP scripting, so I'm not totally ignorant
of fiddling with scripts and such - but I'm unable to discern what the goal
of the fiddling would be in this case.

Assuming this is a valid question, I volunteer to transcribe the answer and
submit it (after someone reviews it for accuracy) to the Wiki FAQ, if that
would help.