Arch Linux

pasabagi

Member

Registered: 2026-06-22

Posts: 3

[SOLVED] intermittent font rendering breakage

Kitty sometimes looks like this.

Other applications also break from time to time.

The font becomes legible if I highlight it, or if I refresh the window.

Any ideas?

PS: please let me know if there are any command outputs that I could post that could shed some light.

PPS: to me, this looks like the data of the image of the rasterized font is being sent to the wrong sized box -- like if you got an image and messed with the header saying what dimensions it has. Which is weird.

|~ fc-match --verbose
Pattern has 43 elts (size 48)
	family: "Noto Sans"(w)
	familylang: "en"(s)
	style: "Regular"(s)
	stylelang: "en"(s)
	fullname: "Noto Sans Regular"(w)
	fullnamelang: "en"(s)
	slant: 0(i)(s)
	weight: 80(f)(s)
	width: 100(f)(s)
	size: 12(f)(s)
	pixelsize: 12.5(f)(s)
	foundry: "GOOG"(s)
	antialias: True(w)
	hintstyle: 1(i)(w)
	hinting: True(w)
	verticallayout: False(s)
	autohint: True(w)
	globaladvance: True(s)
	file: "/usr/share/fonts/noto/NotoSans-Regular.ttf"(s)
	index: 0(i)(w)
	outline: True(s)
	scalable: True(s)
	dpi: 75(f)(s)
	rgba: 1(i)(w)
	scale: 1(f)(s)
	charset: /* tl;dr */
	lang:  /* tl;dr */
	fontversion: 132055(i)(s)
	capability: "otlayout:DFLT otlayout:cyrl otlayout:grek otlayout:latn"(w)
	fontformat: "TrueType"(s)
	embeddedbitmap: True(s)
	decorative: False(s)
	lcdfilter: 1(i)(w)
	namelang: "en"(s)
	prgname: "fc-match"(s)
	postscriptname: "NotoSans-Regular"(s)
	color: False(s)
	symbol: False(s)
	variable: False(s)
	fonthashint: True(s)
	order: 0(i)(s)
	namedinstance: False(s)
	fontwrapper: "SFNT"(s)

Last edited by pasabagi (2026-06-22 08:27:15)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 76,766

Re: [SOLVED] intermittent font rendering breakage

Please use [code][/code] tags.

That's not the font rendering but mesa 26.1 has been reported with this (on some - older - intel chips)
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=313669

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pasabagi

Member

Registered: 2026-06-22

Posts: 3

Re: [SOLVED] intermittent font rendering breakage

Hey, thanks!

All better now:

 sudo pacman -U https://archive.archlinux.org/packages/m/mesa/mesa-1%3A26.0.6-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst 

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,285

Re: [SOLVED] intermittent font rendering breakage

Does this "still" happen? Should be fixed as of mesa 6.1.2, which you should be getting if you updated now.

pasabagi

Member

Registered: 2026-06-22

Posts: 3

Re: [SOLVED] intermittent font rendering breakage

Does this "still" happen? Should be fixed as of mesa 6.1.2, which you should be getting if you updated now.

Boy is my face red. It does not, in fact, still happen.

sudo pacman -Syyu

solves it also. In my defense, I never liked computers anyway.

EDIT: does it make sense to delete the thread? I suspect for future users my meanderings are vanishingly unlikely to help.

Last edited by pasabagi (2026-06-22 16:07:13)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,285

Re: [SOLVED] intermittent font rendering breakage

Stuff like this is the reason it's the boldest and biggest line in this sticky: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=130309

No in all seriousness, if this would still happen this would be bad and should be reported and if you stay on an old mesa indefinitely you will eventually run into a situation were the GUI might not render at all because other libs have moved on in the meantime.

Last edited by V1del (2026-06-22 16:12:57)