A couple of problems in XFCE

adam.ec · 2009-06-30 02:50:56

I'm now on my fourth desktop environment - XFCE. I tried Gnome and couldn't get the system tools working properly, so switched to KDE. There didn't seem to be defined areas of options on menus and just too many options to make it usable. So, onto LXDE. No end of wiki searching and configuration files would get my mouse and keyboard working. Finally, I trudged back to XFCE after using it with Slackware for a really long time. Functionality-wise, it works great. Unfortunately since my last use of XFCE on Slack and this new current installation something has gone horribly wrong with the font rendering.

Before you ask, I don't have sizing problems. It's all I could find whilst Googling which is why I've come to the forums to ask. The problem is the quality of the fonts. Most of the fonts are quite readable, if a little skinny but every now and again I suddenly find problems with the hinting. This is particularly noticable on the drop down box from the Firefox address bar. I get shades of dirty yellow and purple hugging the sides of my fonts. A bit like the old rainbow effect but with less colors. I also get it very badly with bold blue lettering on web pages too.

I have tried a couple of the scripts on Ubuntu forums which supposedly reconfigure the font rendering. Nothing has worked yet. I tried using MS core fonts on my system which also didn't improve my situation. I would put up with it but unfortunately it's so bad in Openoffice and Bluefish that it's stopping me from working.

Does anybody else have trouble with this? Is it worth producing a custom xorg.conf file to try and put this right? Would setting my Samsung 920nw to 75hz actually benefit anything, because I can't find a way of doing this easily to test it? If bad fonts are just a feature of XFCE is there another desktop environment or window manager that looks better and is just as stable?

Thanks for any help and your comments are much appreciated.

Pank · 2009-06-30 03:03:26

First of all I have excellent font rendering with XFCE. It is at least on par with Windows.

You should check out this wiki-entry.

You specifially need to look at the cairo package, the freetyp2 package and the libxft package.

There are a couple of different versions on AUR you could try. Mainly the cleartype packages, the lcd packages and the ubuntu packages.

pogeymanz · 2009-06-30 03:37:05

Did you try changing the sub-pixel order in the Appearance settings thingy in XFCE?

bredin · 2009-06-30 05:09:10

Download a ubuntu live-cd, run it. Copy the /usr/share/fonts folder to an external drive or directly onto your arch installation.

adam.ec · 2009-06-30 13:46:30

Guys you are top. Cairo package made the first improvement - stopped the 'spider' effect on the text that didn't look too bad to begin with. Things suddenly improved (speed-wise as well for some reason) with libxft. I seemed to already have that installed but reinstalling worked. Ubuntus /usr/share/fonts just put the icing on the cake.

Many, many thanks.

fh · 2009-07-16 04:47:24

Pank wrote:

First of all I have excellent font rendering with XFCE. It is at least on par with Windows.
You specifially need to look at the cairo package, the freetyp2 package and the libxft package.
.

fontconfig-lcd & cairo-lcd have made things really good for me. Thanks a lot.

I'll try Ubuntu fonts also.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-06-30 02:50:56

A couple of problems in XFCE

#2 2009-06-30 03:03:26

Re: A couple of problems in XFCE

#3 2009-06-30 03:37:05

Re: A couple of problems in XFCE

#4 2009-06-30 05:09:10

Re: A couple of problems in XFCE

#5 2009-06-30 13:46:30

Re: A couple of problems in XFCE

#6 2009-07-16 04:47:24

Re: A couple of problems in XFCE

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