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#1 2016-07-23 11:52:19

randomarchuser
Member
Registered: 2016-07-23
Posts: 14

Several problems after full system update

So... I've just made a System Upgrade using Pacman -Syu. I wasn't able to do this for a few months now because I wasn't able to create a system-backup before. And I never do -Syu without having a backup. This isn't the first time a -Syu broke lots of stuff, but this is the first time I would actually keep my System upgraded and fix stuff instead of just rolling back, adding some ignores to pacman's config, and so on.

In total there have been 773 Updates. I made screenshots of the upgrade list but I'm certain it won't help anything in this topic because of the massive amount of packages.
In the past (several months ago) I've updated "freetype2" (was part of a -Syu too) which made my system-font go ugly as hell. I'm not quite sure but I think it was "sans-serif" before and now it's Cantarell which just looks super ugly. I wasn't able to find sans-serif or any other font that won't cause my eyes to bleed (Thunderbird and Websites (e.g. Twitter) have been the worst) so I downgraded freetype2 again and put it into pacman's ignore list.

This time severel other packages needed a newer verison of freetype2, so I thought I'll give it a try again since it's been months since my last -Syu. But again, it looks horrible. Is there a way to fix that or to revert to sans-serif (if that would be any help at all)?

Another more crucial issue for me: I can't use vertical scrolling nor tap2click anymore. Tap-to-click is set to true in dconf, there was a option in the regular gnome settings panel for tap2click too, but now it's gone. (I completely forgot to mention that I am using gnome, sorry. I was on 3.16 before the upgrade, not it's the newest (3.20 I believe)) I can't find any setting for vertical scrolling in dconf, but it just stopped working everywhere (Firefox and Sublime text editor tested). I am using a apple magic tracking using the synaptics driver which worked flawlessly (even for multi-touch) in the past. Mtrack driver is not an option because it had several other issues, including tap2click and multi-touch wasn't working.

Some other minor but still annoying issues: The GUI for dconf ("dconf Editor") looks absolutely horrible. That doesn't bother me too much because even if I use dconf to change lots of stuff, the time I'm using it is rather short. But I really don't know why gnome is always getting worse (I think it's a gnome issue(?)). https://s31.postimg.org/bwxifye7v/Scree … _47_12.png Before the update it looked more like a table. Visible cell borders, better spacing, and so on. Now it looks just weird. I also don't like the new look of the title bars. Is there a way to revert only design parts? I'm not sure what files I would need to replace exactly and I'm afraid of breaking other things if I just manually replace some GTK files...

Also, firefox seems to have GTK support now, but it doesn't support dark theme. Is there a way that I can manually fix that somehow?

These are all issues I've noticed so far. Can I replace some packages/fonts/files manually to fix this stuff? It sounds like a rather bad idea to me to revert all 773 upgrades now just because I want a different font and look (gtk/gnome) and my touchpad is only half-working now...

I'd appreciate any kind of help. If any more details or screenshots are needed, just let me know.

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#2 2016-07-23 12:12:57

randomarchuser
Member
Registered: 2016-07-23
Posts: 14

Re: Several problems after full system update

Short Update: I tried the following:

warning: downgrading package adwaita-icon-theme (3.20-2 => 3.18.0-1)
warning: downgrading package xf86-input-synaptics (1.8.99.1-1 => 1.8.3-2)
warning: downgrading package freetype2 (2.6.5-2 => 2.6.2-1)

For the icon theme: There seems to be one missing Icon I don't care about, the other icons are better again now.
Synaptics: Tap-to-click is working again now, vertical scrolling is still not working.
Freetype2: Font is still a mess. I think it's even worse now. Especially in Sublime Text Editor it's absolutely unusable. The font looks way too bold now. (With the newest version of freetype2 same result)

Edit: I'm sorry. Freetype2.6.2-1 wasn't the version I was using before. I was using 2.6.1-1 before. But I can't downgrade to that version because libbluray depends on at least 2.6.2. I tried to remove libbluray but I am afraid of breaking dependencies for "ffmepg", "ffmpeg2.8" and "gvfs".

Edit2: Sublime seems to use "Monospace" as font. The monospace font (e.g. in terminal) seems to be unchanged, but in sublime it's just horrible now. Looks like it would be bold everywhere, no matter what font-size I choose.

Last edited by randomarchuser (2016-07-23 12:25:33)

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#3 2016-07-23 12:18:15

Scimmia
Fellow
Registered: 2012-09-01
Posts: 11,466

Re: Several problems after full system update

Gnome no longer supports the synapics driver, only the libinput one. You can still use the synaptics driver, you just have to configure it manually.

For freetype/fontconfig, configure it however you'd like. Partial updates WILL get you into trouble.

Last edited by Scimmia (2016-07-23 12:23:51)

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#4 2016-07-23 12:18:32

WorMzy
Forum Moderator
From: Scotland
Registered: 2010-06-16
Posts: 11,788
Website

Re: Several problems after full system update

Hi randomarchuser, welcome to the forums.

Firstly, please don't create "shopping-list" style threads. You should have read our Code of Conduct when registering, but please revisit it and make sure you understand it.
Secondly, please search before posting. There is a fairly active thread about dark themes in Firefox which answers that question. The gnome input problem you're having was discussed to great lengths not too long ago (when the gnome 3.20 update was released), there was a lengthy topic about theme problems around that time too, which would probably address your dconf GUI issue.
Thirdly, depending on when you last updated you may have missed an important bit of news: https://www.archlinux.org/news/required … 016-04-23/; I don't want to scare you off, but if you are unable to update Arch regularly (once a week is ideal), then you may want to reconsider your choice of distro. Arch is rolling-release, it doesn't do well when it's stopped for long periods of time.

Mod note: Not a Sys Admin topic, moving to NC.


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#5 2016-07-23 12:30:58

randomarchuser
Member
Registered: 2016-07-23
Posts: 14

Re: Several problems after full system update

Scimmia wrote:

Gnome no longer supports the synapics driver, only the libinput one. You can still use the synaptics driver, you just have to configure it manually.

For freetype/fontconfig, configure it however you'd like. Partial updates WILL get you into trouble.

Thanks for that information. I will take a look at the libinput one, do you know if it supports the magic trackpad?

Can you give any help for configuring freetype? I've only used the gnome-tweak-tool so far to change through some fonts, but it only makes things worse.

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#6 2016-07-23 12:34:43

randomarchuser
Member
Registered: 2016-07-23
Posts: 14

Re: Several problems after full system update

WorMzy wrote:

Hi randomarchuser, welcome to the forums.

Firstly, please don't create "shopping-list" style threads. You should have read our Code of Conduct when registering, but please revisit it and make sure you understand it.
Secondly, please search before posting. There is a fairly active thread about dark themes in Firefox which answers that question. The gnome input problem you're having was discussed to great lengths not too long ago (when the gnome 3.20 update was released), there was a lengthy topic about theme problems around that time too, which would probably address your dconf GUI issue.
Thirdly, depending on when you last updated you may have missed an important bit of news: https://www.archlinux.org/news/required … 016-04-23/; I don't want to scare you off, but if you are unable to update Arch regularly (once a week is ideal), then you may want to reconsider your choice of distro. Arch is rolling-release, it doesn't do well when it's stopped for long periods of time.

Mod note: Not a Sys Admin topic, moving to NC.

Thanks for your help. I'm sorry for the wrong style of the thread, I will read that link now. Since all these issues appeared after the upgrade, I thought it'd be the best thing to create one thread for all of them. Sorry if that's something this forum dislikes, I'll take care of that the next time.
I am going to search for these threads now, even though the font and touchpad issue is the only major thing I am complaining about right now.

I saw that news on twitter just a few hours ago, before I made that system upgrade. I didn't ran into any trouble, but do I have to take care about something else now that I didn't upgraded pacman earlier?
I am able to do weekly backups again now, so daily updates (I've -Syu'd daily in the past) isn't a problem anymore. I'm using arch with gnome since almost two years now and tried lots of other linux distros before and so far I'm most comfortable with arch+gnome.

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