By default, Java doesn't use anti-aliasing on fonts in AWT applications. It's been available for some time however, and can be switched on with the awt.useSystemAAFontSettings setting.

To enable anti-aliased fonts just for Netbeans, add -J-Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=on to the end of the netbeans_default_options line in /usr/share/netbeans/etc/netbeans.conf e.g.: Alternatively, you can set this globally so that all AWT apps are affected, by setting the _JAVA_OPTIONS environment variable in your .bash_profile: This also has Swing equivalent, using the swing.aatext preference. You'll have to log out and log back in for this to take effect.