Comment 5 for bug 554935

I do not agree that this is ATI only.
After upgrading an Intel mobo using on-board Intel graphics from 14.04 to 14.10, I got the same problem. It is not connected with any one font. dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig did not help; neither did removing /etc/fonts/fonts.conf.

What does fix it, but only 95%, is turning off hinting. I used the Unity tweak tool. I can still find a stray example of bad characters here and there.

I am running the classic, not Unity interface. Tested with apps: FireFox, Chrome, Thunderbird, Gimp, Inkspace, Libreoffice all of which had the problem.

The fonts look a lot better with hinting turned on!