Comment # 22 on bug 1172022 from Antonio Larrosa

Thanks to everyone commenting for your help providing detailed information
about your configuration. This took me a while, but I'm glad to say that a fix
is already on its way.

The fix will come in the form of a fonts-config package update. The default
settings in /etc/sysconfig/fonts-config was changed in Tumbleweed long ago, but
this change of default values was never translated to SLE (nor Leap), so
current values in that file are not appropriate for the newer freetype2 library
if someone tries to use rgb subpixel hinting (which xfce is enforcing, ignoring
the fontconfig configuration).

If you want to fix it manually, you can set:

FORCE_HINTSTYLE="hintslight"
USE_LCDFILTER="lcddefault"
USE_RGBA="rgb"

in /etc/sysconfig/fonts-config and then run:

sudo fonts-config

Alternatively, you can also just wait for the fix to get to the official
repositories, which I hope happens in a week or so.

For those interested in why I didn't submit the fix directly: The fix has two
parts, I submitted the first part at
https://github.com/openSUSE/fonts-config/pull/21 . Once that PR is merged, I'll
submit the second part which I prepared at
https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/home:alarrosa:branches:M17N/fonts-config
to SLE, Leap and Tumbleweed.