firfox, small fonts, tiny webpages.... need help

[Keiko]

Hia,

Sorry title isn't very accurate.

I'm developing a large problem with my Gentoo system, and its rather destressing. I've been using it since around Christmas day last year, so not long really, and I really love Gentoo...

But, I've had a few (non-technical) problems. Firstly I was somewhat disgusted by the screens / windows sizes and all that, expecting the widows to look and behave similar to how I've become accustomed to in Windows, eventually I was made aware windows on linux are just differen't, and after a long period of headaches, and difficulty trying to ajust, I've got used to it.

However, I still have a huge problem with firefox. I've begone to shy away from surfing the web or using my web mail, because I simply find my firefox on Gentoo, well depressing for want of a better, word, all the text is tiny in comparison to my windows version, which I've gotten a little used to, but renders some websites un-readable, I've often used the - Ctr + combination in these casess, but that screws up the website, and Generally the majority of websites, just dont feel right.

I'm resorting to writing this from XP, as I'm finding it real hard to use firefox on Gentoo for more then a quick check of my inbox. I've even considered replacing my XP system with another linux distro, I hoped that Kanoraa, if i've got the name right, ( a gentoo based system with xgl) could be that but the live cd doesn't boot on my hardware. Though I really love Gentoo, and whats the point of rebooting into another distro just to surf the web.

I dont want to loose Gentoo, I love it, i'm comfy in the command line, xinue-ui is awesome, as is xmms, theres very few things I need to work on to completely rid myself of Windows and have Gentoo as my main desktop OS, which to a degree it is already - However this has to be one, I'm coming close to not wanting to surf the net at all in Gentoo... and its only a matter of time, before I end up stop using Gentoo itself, which is the complete opposite of what I want.

OK, i've babbled on far too long,

Could someone please help me figure this out.

I'm currently running a 2.6.25-r1 kernel, I have fluxbox as my WM, and if it helps i used GDM as my DM... oh and of course firefox as my web browser.

Not sure how to word or describe this any better, but its a real problem for me.

I truly hope someone can help me - Keiko.

[Pestlett]

What is your xorg.conf configured like?

Have you read through this:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Xorg_and_Fonts

There is a lot there to help you.
_________________
"Well ---- me, A ---- ing wizard. I hate ---- ing wizards!"
"You shouldn't ---- them, then."

[Keiko]

Hia Pestlett,

Thanks for your reply, I've posted my current xorg.conf bellow. I recognise that guide, but can't recall how far I got with it, perhaps I relised it wouldn't help, or followed it throughout, I just dont recall, but the problem remains ???

Do you think this could be the solution, its not just a font problem, though thats a huge part of it, webpages just display far smaller then I need them to be, or are comfortouble with... if you think it will do the trick I'll go through it again

Anyways, heres my config, Keiko.

[Keiko]

Also...

I have a slight iritation with my terminals, all of them have the same behaviour so it must be a system wide setting, proberly to do with xorg, but I dont know what.

Directories are displayed blue, within a normal user initiated terminal (eterm, aterm or xterm), which is fine, accept that when the directories are coloured with this particular blue, I can't read them, without bumping my head on my VDU I have to get so close, and its annoying the hell out of me, I've just emerged and setup aterm somewhat, but that usess the same colour scheme, I'm fine with every other colour and appreciate the highlighting of differen't file types.

But, when moving around directories, i'm forced to su to root, to avoid being blinded by the blue coloured directory names, that I can't see clearly.

So I was wondering if someone could suggest a work around for me, perhaps a change of colour, or even disabling the colour change for directories would be great... though of course I'll need to know where to make this setting change.

Thanks again, Keiko.

[BitJam]

For the default font sizes you need to tell the Nvidia driver your DPI (dots per inch). In the Nvidia device section of my xorg.conf I have the line:

[Tekara]

I actually ran into a lot of the same problems, for color scheme's on my terminal (and irc programs) I really like to use green text on black background scheme's. The high contrast coloring is easier to read and the black background is a lot easier on my eyes and well green is always has a cooling effect on the eyes as well. With he font size I jsut increased it a couple steps and saved that as my default terminal setting.

In firefox I jacked up my default text size and I have happy with the results. Oggasionally if I want larger text like when it's late at night and the eyes start getting blurry you can hold down the ctrl key and use the mouse weel to dynamically increase or decrease the font size. I did something similar within kde as well, the individual settings work out a lot better since it only particular affects areas that I want to change and not everything, as not everything is too small for me.
_________________
The danger from computers is not that they will eventually get as smart as men, but that we will agree to meet them halfway. - Bernard Avishai
Computers are a lot like air conditioners - they both work great until you open windows.

[troavr]

This has happened to me before on previous installs, it all happened to me because I let my computer auto-configure X for me, shame on me.
When I got rid of the icky auto xorg.conf and made a new one via

[ppurka]

I have found the following dir color quite satisfactory. Its blue but a lighter shade. I have the following in my .Xdefaults:

[Keiko]

Hia BitJam,

Thanks for your suggestions, especially witht he dir colors, as thats fixed now, and was incredibly easy... I changed the directory line, to underscore (which isn't working, but I'm not fussed) instead of bold and then removed the colour. Its far eassier to read now. Bizarly though I now need to reduce the thought size in Aterm, but Eterm is absoloutley perfect now.

I'm a little too tired to get into my xorg.conf now, I'll have a bash at it tomorow... hey 'bash', is that a pun...

Hopefully, I'll get things sorted. I guess its just a matter of tweaking things until your happy. Gentoo is awesome, but my sysem as been spoilt by these few irritations on the graphical side, maily with firefox, so i'll be really happy when I have them sorted.

Thanks to you all

Keiko.

[mc_barron]

If you're using Firefox 1.5 why don't you just set the minimum font size and be done with it? I mean, you should still work out the font issues with Xorg, but for now wouldn't that at least fix the "font is too small on some pages" problem?

[suksit]

Don't know if this is relavant to your problem or not.

I used to compile Firefox with -O3 optimization flag and had not only the font but also stability issues.
So I re-compiled it using -O2 and both problems were gone....