I guess the reason is that xorg's internal freetype2 library has the bytecode interpreter disabled. There are patent issues around this, but I hope it can be enabled by removing the comments, as stand-alone freetype2 has it enabled too. The file in question is xc/extras/freetype2/include/freetype/config/ftoption.h , line /* #define TT_CONFIG_OPTION_BYTECODE_INTERPRETER */ -- Jindrich Makovicka