Fixing Ubuntu Issues: Ugly Font Rendering in NetBeans

Recently i've had the displeasure of working in NetBeans on Ubuntu. The IDE is great but the font rendering is terrible. Here's my solution to this problem.

The first step is to uninstall Open JDK (if it is installed) and install Sun's JRE. Do that by selecting the following packages in the synaptic package manager:

• sun-java6-bin
• sun-java6-jdk
• sun-java6-jre

Mark all installed instances of Open JDk for uninstallation if you have to, then click Apply.

Confirm your Java version by going to the console and entering

java -version

You should see

java version "1.6.0_26"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_26-b03)
Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (build 20.1-b02, mixed mode)

Now that that's done, install Microsoft's Core Fonts. Do this by going to the Ubuntu Software Center and searching for 

ttf-mscorefonts

Install them, then open NetBeans, go to Tools > Options > Fonts and Colours and choose the Courier New font. I set mine to size 18 bold. Here is my result:

Before

After

Many thanks to aura7 of Ubuntu forums for this tip.

References:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1930034
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/15495/add-microsoft-core-fonts-to-ubuntu/