Garbled Text after UP5 upgrade

[LMNewb]

Occasionally, text can become garbled. Then I click around, give other things focus, then come back, and the text is fine. Seems like a driver issue. I'm running nouveau with an NVIDIA Geforce 8400 GS. I really don't want to use the proprietary driver, as it leads to kernel upgrade issues, down the road. I'd rather not have the headache.

Any thoughts how to fix with using Nouveau would be appreciated! Thanks!

[steve88]

@LMNewb

Similarly installed UP5 on LMDE 64 bit and have same text problem as described. Also have problem in my 'Gramps' genealogy program on same PC in respect of garbled text in 'Ancestry' tree boxes. None of these thing happened in LMDE whilst on UP4.
Fortunately I have a cloned drive with original UP4 version of LMDE made just prior to applying UP5, so have a backup I can fall back to if need be, but would hope that some solution turns up eventually.

I have tried:
[1] Upgraded versions of LMDE 64 bit on two other PC's, and problems appear exactly the same on separate LMDE installations and on separate PC's.
[2] Running Gramps on two other LMDE PC's, but still not right.
[3] Running Gramps on Mint 13 Maya (Cinnamon & Mate) and on Mint KDE. NO problem so it is not a Gramps bug or corrupted Gramps file.
[4] Installed proprietary NVIDIA Geforce drivers and removed Nouveau (on spare PC) and checked that I am running on NVIDIA drivers. This has not made any difference whatsoever to the garbled text problem but might have marginally better font rendering (but this might be hopeful imagination on my part).
[5] Installed (substituted) the Ubuntu texts in etc/fonts, and text rendering is better/prettier, but still random garbled text problem.
[6] Various combinations of desktop 'themes', and tweaked the fonts settings.

Despite above, still have same problem with garbled text elsewhere in terminal, on desktop, windows titles, nautilus file screens, and it happens in both MATE & Cinnamon desktop versions of LMDE regardless.

From some of other forum topics re upgrading woes, I think the problem is a bit widespread.

Very much a LMNewb myself so can't claim to be any sort of expert, but I am reasonably confident that (by elimination), it is not hardware (PC or graphics card) or driver issue. Also not down to a botched upgrade as I fortunately had no problems (apart from download speed) on any installation upgraded (did 4 PC's). Hopefully the elimination of things might help, particularly with your suggestion of changing to NVIDA drivers.

Hopefully Clem & team + other cleverer LMDE users will come up with some solutions in due course (fingers crossed), but will live with this annoying problem till then as really like and am committed to LMDE.

Good luck.

Main PC = Generic desktop PC with Intel i7 980x@3.33Ghz, 12 Gb DDR3 ram, NVIDIA GT215 (GeForce GT 240), 600 Gb Western digital 'Velociraptor' main drive.

[LMNewb]

@steve88

Interesting that you are seeing this with NVIDIA proprietary drivers. Out of curiosity, do the two other PC's also have NVIDIA cards, as well?

[steve88]

@LMNewb

Yes, all my PC's have NVIDA graphics cards, but not same type, or vintage. One is more elderly PCI slot version as opposed to others that are either PCI express or AGP slot. Main PC and one spare PC are both using nouveau. Other spare PC has been experimentally returned to NVIDA drivers. All PC's have same problems regardless of driver. Not sure there is any significance in make of graphics card, and don't really think problem is graphic card related (my gut feeling but can't explain why).

The NVIDA driver used is from the LMDE UP5 Linux Mint 'latest' repositories, not direct from Debian repositories or elsewhere.

The appearance of garbled text is very random and have since, also noticed it coming and going on the text descriptions on desktop icons, on the 'tab's' in Chromium browser (not Firefox ?) and even on the labels to icons on my 'Avant window manager' dock.

[elextr]

With Nvidia 8800gts neauvou driver Mate desktop after UP5 had the same garbled text problem on mint menu, synaptic, chromium tabs.

Changing all fonts to dejavu sans seems to have fixed all but chromium tabs.

The problem only seems to occur with things that react to mouse movement.

[jjwc]

Can confirm that this is occurring for a colleague running LMDE who ran the upgrade over the weekend. His Sony Vaio has an nVidia card as well.

[jjwc]

For anyone having this problem, I fixed my colleagues setup by using sgfxi from http://smxi.org/

Good luck!

[Kanelbulle]

I also had this problem after the UP5 upgrade. I'm too stupid to be able to install sgfxi, I tried, no luck. (Can hardly find my way around their website. ) I was able to fix the problem by following this handy guide however:

Nvidia Graphics Drivers - Install Guide
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=191&t=82424

Solved my problem anyway.