[SOLVED] Weird display issue with fonts

dritanm · n00b Joined: 15 May 2016 Posts: 13

Hi all,

I hadn't updated my system for a few weeks, then last week when I did a full update and rebooted into the new kernel, I started seeing some weird display problems. Certain letters/words are missing entirely from gnome-shell. See this screenshot as an example (I typed "set" in the search box but the letters don't show up): https://imgur.com/a/OIbbG3W

Some information about the system and what I have tried so far:
1. Running latest stable gentoo-sources (6.6.47-gentoo-x86_64) and gnome 45.
2. The issue is apparent during GDM login as well. For example most of the letters in the greyed out "Password" box do not appear. Neither do all the letters in the accessibility menu on the top right corner of GDM.
3. Most (but not all) of the missing letters reappear if I change the scaling or enable Large Text in the accessibility options.
4. Applications like Firefox/Thunderbird/Terminal do not appear to be affected. Other applications like Signal-Desktop just have a blank canvas...
5. I tested this on XFCE4 and Gnome-Classic as well, both seem to have the same issue.
6. I am running Wayland and the GPU is an AMD 6900XT (mesa driver).

I tried resetting gnome dconf settings, disabled all gnome extensions, and reinstalled a number of fonts. The issue still persists..

Before rebuilding the entire world tree, I thought I'd ask here and see if anyone has any idea for why this is happening

Thanks!
Dritan

rab0171610 · Guru Joined: 24 Dec 2022 Posts: 407

I would not rebuild the entire "world tree". I had a similar problem before. I use KDE but a Gnome/GTK app (Gnome Disks) was displaying weird font issues. In my case, it turned out to be the cache for font config (possibly corrupted) and/or the fallback font choice. I don't remember the exact details. It recurred a few times even after fixing the issue. Finally it stopped and never happened again.
You can read more about font config (and the fallback font) here:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Font_configuration
I am not real familiar with font config, but I think this may help to rebuild/reset the cache:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/772257/invalid-cache-files-in-cache-fontconfig

dritanm · n00b Joined: 15 May 2016 Posts: 13

Thanks rab0171610 for the pointer. The Archwiki article was very informative!

Unfortunately I don't think my issue was related to fonts as forcing the cache update didn't do anything. However, downgrading mesa from ~amd to stable (24.1.3) resolved my issue. It appears the graphic artifacts were driver related. I guess I'll wait until mesa-24.2 is stable before trying again.

flexibeast · Posted: Sun Aug 25, 2024 11:09 pm Post subject:

As a heads-up, the Gentoo wiki has its own page about Fontconfig, and in fact i recently did a bit of a revamp of various fonts-related pages, including some updates to the 'root' page, "Fonts", and adding a "Fonts/Background" page to explain a number of fonts-related concepts that i've noticed users having issues with.

The Arch wiki indeed has lots of useful information, but i'd like to encourage Gentoo users to check the Gentoo wiki first - and, if possible, either report significant gaps here, or close those gaps by adding to the wiki (which only requires creating an account).