Trouble With Font Rendering In Menu

[Hawkeye_52]

After Clem's recent blog concerning Cinnamon, I updated my LM 12 and then logged into Cinnamon 1.1.3. The desktop looks fine, as well as the fonts on the panel, but when I try to open the Menu, all I get are unreadable 'blocks' -- no words or fonts . I am running LM 12 on an older 64 bit machine, with Celeron dual core E1500 processors (2.2 GHz), 2 GB of ram, an ATI Radeon HD 4350 graphics card, and a 22" LCD (16:10) monitor with a resolution of 1680x1050.

I do not experience this problem in Gnome Shell, Gnome Classic, or MATE. Anyone else experiencing a similar problem, or am I 'just not holding my mouth right' when I log in ?

Any help and/or suggestions would be appreciated. I am quite anxious to give Cinnamon a spin around the block...

Hawkeye

[Roken]

I have no experience of Cinnamon, though I have seen the behaviour that you seem to be experiencing. Have you tried rebooting?

[Hawkeye_52]

I have no experience of Cinnamon, though I have seen the behaviour that you seem to be experiencing. Have you tried rebooting?

Roken,

I have rebooted out of and back into Cinnamon -- no success. I have also rebooted out of Cinnamon, into Gnome Shell, Gnome Classic, and MATE, then back to Cinnamon -- also no success .

Thanks for making the suggestion, though. I would sure like to give Cinnamon a real try out...

Hawkeye

[Radioman621]

I am having the exact same problem, but only on a box running Fedora 16. The menu fonts on my Mint 12 box render ok, but the Fedora 16 box menu text looks exactly like you describe. At first I thought I might need a better video card, but everything else renders ok.

I did notice that when I installed Cinnamon on Mint 12 the installer also install true type font. I installed true type font on the Fedora 16 box and it did not appear to fix the problem. So far I like cinnamon (I hate gnome3). Now if I could just get the font problem fixed.

[Hawkeye_52]

I am having the exact same problem, but only on a box running Fedora 16. The menu fonts on my Mint 12 box render ok, but the Fedora 16 box menu text looks exactly like you describe. At first I thought I might need a better video card, but everything else renders ok.

I did notice that when I installed Cinnamon on Mint 12 the installer also install true type font. I installed true type font on the Fedora 16 box and it did not appear to fix the problem. So far I like cinnamon (I hate gnome3). Now if I could just get the font problem fixed.

Thanks for the feedback. It's at least good to know that I am not a 'freak' when it comes to this problem .

It looks to me as if this is directly related to the menu application itself, because the fonts on the panel, and 'log out' or 'exit' windows (when I can get to them ) are rendered correctly. Your experience that it works correctly with one distribution, but not another is also interesting. This just gets 'curiouser' and 'curiouser'...

Thanks again, Radioman621. If you come to some conclusions, please let me know. I am so non-technical that I am afraid my only option is to wait for updates that will eventually wipe the problem out...

Hawkeye

[Radioman621]

I will not give up on this until I figure it out. I really, really, dislike gnome3 (it would probably be OK if it was on a tablet but not a desktop, especially not they way I like to work) and it looks like the eventual aim of cinnamon will give me back what I want.

Your right about it being only the text in the menu. Everything on all of the applications look normal. I am off this weekend and hope to spend some time digging into this.

[Hawkeye_52]

I will not give up on this until I figure it out. I really, really, dislike gnome3 (it would probably be OK if it was on a tablet but not a desktop, especially not they way I like to work) and it looks like the eventual aim of cinnamon will give me back what I want.

Your right about it being only the text in the menu. Everything on all of the applications look normal. I am off this weekend and hope to spend some time digging into this.

I am with you on Gnome 3, it may become something useful if the Gnome 3 devs ever turn their hearing aids ups. But I may not live long enough to experience it.

Right now I have fiddled with MATE enough to make it a passable experience (although LM 11 remains my main desktop). I am most anxious to try Cinnamon, but I can't read blocks well enough to get past the main menu. You have no idea how many positive thoughts I have going for weekend efforts .

[craig10x]

hope you get it working properly, Hawkeye...if you do i think you will really like Cinnamon

[Radioman621]

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh! I believe the problem is some incompatibility between the cinnamon menu fonts and fedora 16 rendering. The menu works you just cannot read it. When I did this on mint 12 I believe I got a theme called "minty". I do not get that in the Fedora 16 cinnamon. I have made so many experimental changes that I am thinking seriously of reinstalling Fedora 16 and starting over.

[craig10x]

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh! I believe the problem is some incompatibility between the cinnamon menu fonts and fedora 16 rendering. The menu works you just cannot read it. When I did this on mint 12 I believe I got a theme called "minty". I do not get that in the Fedora 16 cinnamon. I have made so many experimental changes that I am thinking seriously of reinstalling Fedora 16 and starting over.

Well...you can always install Mint 12 and easily add Cinnamon to it from the package manager...
Sorry to hear you are having a problem with the session on fedora, though...

oops..my bad...i see you also have mint 12 as well....perhaps someone on the fedora forums who is using it might be able to help....
other then that, i guess your idea about starting over might be the best...

[Radioman621]

Now I am starting to think that it may be Fedora 16 and the video card I have in this particular box. I reinstalled Fedora 16 and found that a few of those fonts look weird also. I did not notice before as there are not really any menus to look at and it did not default to the fail over version if it does not like your video card. And I installed cinnamon right away. I have completely given up on F16 here at home. This a box I am putting together for another project. I was delighted to see that there was a version of cinnamon for Fedora 16 so I would not be crippled by gnome3 and I am trying to make it work.

[Hawkeye_52]

Now I am starting to think that it may be Fedora 16 and the video card I have in this particular box. I reinstalled Fedora 16 and found that a few of those fonts look weird also. I did not notice before as there are not really any menus to look at and it did not default to the fail over version if it does not like your video card. And I installed cinnamon right away. I have completely given up on F16 here at home. This a box I am putting together for another project. I was delighted to see that there was a version of cinnamon for Fedora 16 so I would not be crippled by gnome3 and I am trying to make it work.

This may be your solution to the problem, but remember, I started this thread because the problem was manifesting itself within Cinnamon on Linux Mint 12...

[Radioman621]

I am still digging into this. With so many variables it has proved difficult to narrow down the source of the problem. Everything appears to work, I just cannot read the fonts in the menu. And oddly the gibberish on the screen changes periodically for the same menu choice.

[Hawkeye_52]

I am still digging into this. With so many variables it has proved difficult to narrow down the source of the problem. Everything appears to work, I just cannot read the fonts in the menu. And oddly the gibberish on the screen changes periodically for the same menu choice.

I am beginning to wonder whether it might be my video card -- an ATI/AMD 4350. I know there have been problems reported about that type of card with LM 12 (and many others, actually). What type of video card are you using?

[Hawkeye_52]

I am still digging into this. With so many variables it has proved difficult to narrow down the source of the problem. Everything appears to work, I just cannot read the fonts in the menu. And oddly the gibberish on the screen changes periodically for the same menu choice.

I am beginning to wonder whether it might be my video card -- an ATI/AMD 4350. I know there have been problems reported about that type of card with LM 12 (and many others, actually). What type of video card are you using?

It's been a while since I started this thread, and I have a happy ending, of sorts.

I suspected the ATI/AMD 4350 video card might be a problem, so I switched computers. This computer is also a dual core processor, but uses an nVidia GeForce 8400 GS video card with 1 GB of memory. With this configuration, Cinnamon is beautiful and easy to use.

Hope this may help someone in the future that experiences my original problem...

Hawkeye

[Egon82]

Oh damn so I searched a bit and found this thread just to find out there is no real solution?
I have the same issues and the same graphic card (HD 4350). Well at least it confirms that it'S the specific graphic card.

Or does anyone know a work around? I'm using MATE atm but I'm not that happy with it (my sensors applet doesn't show up) so I want to try Cinnamon.

EDIT: I think I found a solution: I'm now using the updated AMD drivers (8.911) so the pixel mash is gone. However the monitor filckers now sometimes. Maybe I try the newest driver.

[narendra.d]

Having something similar with the Menu Rendering on Cinnamon.

The issues start ONLY after using the Top Left corner. The Menu Fonts are missing charecters, the Menu Bar only shows blocks with all fonts in them missing, the mouse pointer goes missing sometimes. A logoff and Login does not resolve the issue.

I have a Nvidia Geforce 6100 and AMD Athlon X2 64 bit processor. I am not sure if or whether I am using any graphics driver, maybe Mesa. Certainly Not Nvidia

[Tragicsandwich]

I have had similar problems with GNOME. Classic and MATE work fine. GNOME worked fine when I first installed, but once I ran the updater much of my menu text changed to blocks, asian script, and other useless gibberish. The screen also flashes on occasion and I will lose both menu bars entirely. I am fairly new to the Linux community(last time I tried using it at all was RedHat 6.0). I have been told that there is a file I could delete that would force Linux to recompile my drivers(assuming the "updated" video driver is to blame), but was unable to find the files I was sent to look for. Terminal displays correctly, but other buttons do not. Even the log off/shut down buttons are recognizable because maybe 2 characters display correctly. I am willing to try just about anything, since I have no real work to save. I just want to avoid installing Mint again. It took me about 4 tries to get my boot manager to correctly boot Windows 8/Linux Mint. Once again, I appreciate any help that can be provided. I want to make this work. Quite the learning experience.


Build a man a fire and you warm him for a day, but set fire to him and he will be warm for the rest of his life.

[deuZige]

I'm having the font issues in the menu's and the desktop. Everywhere else everything looks awesome and sharp, except for the menu's and desktop items.
And it's the third time i've had this right after the reboot needed when you finish installing the ati driver.

So i gues the driver's screwed up.

[deuZige]

I can confirm it was the driver. Just downed the latest from the ati site and the problem is gone.