[Solved] KDE Plasma on 4K TV font issue

colinkeenan · 2019-07-18 19:24:22

Something went wrong with the fonts after going into display settings and back out. I didn't try to change anything, but it said something had changed when I tried to exit, so I clicked discard changes. Now fonts look bad. Before they were fantastic and crisp. I can't find anything to solve this issue. Rebooting doesn't work and trying other resolutions doesn't work either. I let Nvidia choose the resolution automatically, and it's back to the original resolution, but still looks bad.

I had also taken a look at the font settings but didn't change anything. Now, going back into font settings, I found a checkmark under the enabled ant-aliasing saying to "Exclude range from anti-aliasing" and choosing everything up to 99 pt!. Unchecking that and restarting the fonts settings was a big improvement, but after restarting the computer, the bad font came back and looking at that setting, it was checked again to exclude pretty much everything from anti-aliasing.

SOLVED: Unchecking both force DPI 96 and the exclude anti-aliasing boxes solved the problem. The thing is, I didn't do anything with those settings when I looked at the fonts because I didn't even see them. I just quickly looked at those settings, thought it was just for selecting fonts, and then went back to choose a different setting (display). The issue didn't even show up until I exited the display settings.

Anyway, unchecking those boxes in the font settings solved the problem for me.

NOT SOLVED: That ridiculous box for excluding everything from anit-aliasing checked itself again. What's going on? Anyway to stop that from happening?

SOLVED: It is a known KDE Plasma bug, and for me, setting subpixel rendering to Vendor Default and unchecking the box for excluding anti-aliasing solved it. There is supposed to be a fix for this bug coming soon.

Last edited by colinkeenan (2019-07-19 17:21:20)

TechnoJellyfish · 2019-07-19 10:37:42

This is a known bug with KDE (see here). What's really ridiculous about it is that I got hit by it without even changing a single setting: just opening and closing the "Fonts" sub-menu is enough to mess up font rendering.

To make the settings I wanted to stick I had to perform some voodoo involving resetting to default and re-applying my settings a couple of times. Once your settings seem to stick just make sure to never open the "Fonts" menu ever again or you'll have to repeat the whole dance.

Edit: It's supposedly fixed in Plasma 5.17 so we should be good once that hits the shelves.

Last edited by TechnoJellyfish (2019-07-19 12:21:51)

colinkeenan · 2019-07-19 17:04:20

Thanks for the information. I just wish I had read it before opening fonts just now because everything looked beautiful when I turned on the computer this time and I looked at fonts to confirm that box was not checked. It wasn't, but now I'm afraid it will check itself the next time. I'm glad to here it will be fixed soon.

colinkeenan · 2019-07-19 17:05:38

Actually, everything looks good except Dolphin. Did whatever you did fix fonts in Dolphin too?

colinkeenan · 2019-07-19 17:18:44

Ok. Now that I've read many of the comments on the bug, I see why Dolphin looked bad. It's because I opened it after opening fonts. I also found the easiest solution from the comments. Set subpixel rendering to Vendor Default. I did that, removed the auto-checked exclude antialiasing box check, reboot, and everything looks great. The subpixel rendering was set to my previous TV anyway, so was probably wrong for this one. Now everything is beautiful, and I will mark this as solved, especially since a fixed version of KDE is on the way.

Arch Linux

#1 2019-07-18 19:24:22

[Solved] KDE Plasma on 4K TV font issue

#2 2019-07-19 10:37:42

Re: [Solved] KDE Plasma on 4K TV font issue

#3 2019-07-19 17:04:20

Re: [Solved] KDE Plasma on 4K TV font issue

#4 2019-07-19 17:05:38

Re: [Solved] KDE Plasma on 4K TV font issue

#5 2019-07-19 17:18:44

Re: [Solved] KDE Plasma on 4K TV font issue

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