I want to make my section titles look like the ones in this figure. However I have no idea what font that is, or how to only change the font for the tiles and sections etc. or how to get the fancy box. Is there a way to figure this out? Any pointer or direct solution is appreciated.
A good place to start would be http://www.identifont.com/ for identifying the font. It has a step-by-step process for finding fonts based on how letters are formed. As far as implementing font, I would suggest using this website: http://www.tug.dk/FontCatalogue/.
the font is almost certainly cmssbx10 at some magnification.
the answers given so far won't help you there, except for the possible redirection
(in a comment) to this question, How do I find out what fonts are used in a document/picture?, that has an answer
regarding how to check in a pdf file for included fonts. but if a magnified
cm font is shown by another name, i'm not sure how to interpret that.
to my surprise, identifont does include some computer modern fonts, but not
sans bold extended. and, also somewhat surprisingly, this is not included in
the latex font catalog, nor are some of the other cm sans options.
a full showing of the computer modern family is given in volume e of computers and typesetting, computer modern typefaces, but that's not on line.
so this looks like a rather more complicated question to answer than it appears at first glance. (unless one has looked at titles in this font for years and years.)
\documentclass[english]{scrbook}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{kpfonts}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\renewcommand\thesection{\protect\rule{1ex}{1ex} \thechapter.\arabic{section}}
\begin{document}
\begingroup
\def\rule#1#2{}%% Kill the \rule from the TOC
\tableofcontents
\endgroup
\chapter{foo}
\section{General Tools}
The role of distributed \ldots
\end{document}
