I should have been clearer - most programmers i know are happy to try out the various font customization techniques and some of them accept it even - by "masses" i meant the large number of people who have used a computer(primarily Windows) before and are willing to give Ubuntu a try, but they do not want or know how-to fiddle with font customizations.
This group of people is the natural customer for Ubuntu and i believe the vast majority of them go back to their previous O.S simply because the default fonts for them are not Windows-like.
My point is Ubuntu would better serve its "natural customer" by focussing on making the O.S look good for this group of people i.e. look Windows-like by default, rather than other newer features.
The masses still use Comic Sans for presentations. They don't really know or care what that serif/sans business is all about and they definitely don't care about the default font. As bad as it is, that's what I see all around.
But I'm not sure what is the problem with font customisation you're referring to. There's a dialog with 4 basic choices (from "blurry" to "crisp, subpixel) and another dialog for fine tuning where you see examples for every single option. How can it be simpler?
