Thanks ever so much for this helpful post. I’ve been searching linux forums in vain for a proper fonts.conf setting. Everyone seems perfectly happy with rgba turned on and hintfull — I, however, found myself getting headaches from all the color halos and awful kerning. In fact, when I first arrived at your site, the letters were smashed together from a disastrous hinting setting. Now, everything looks very elegant — and no more headaches!