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Why is font management so bloody hard in X/Gnome/KDE/whatever?

I think you answered your own question.

One thing that does irritate me with Linux is the lack of standards in the most important part, the GUI. If it is going to be a modern desktop OS, it has to have a good working GUI that anyone can pick up and use, and not just the one user of that machine.

This is one reason why I don't run Linux on the desktop. It however rocks on the server when the interface I See is the same local, or over port 22.