Any more ideas to improve font appearance?

[quiddity]

Hello,

I just installed 14.04. Everything seems to be working nicely, except the fonts look awful. Everything looks blurred or fuzzy. See screenshot attached. I've looked around the internet and tried every piece of advice I can find: changing the fonts, enabling anti-aliasing, forcing the DPI, using Infinality. Nothing has made it any better. It seems trivial, but actually it's not -- it makes everything so unpleasant to use/look at/read for prolonged periods that I might have to give up on the OS if I can't find a solution.

I'm assuming it's the fonts, since they look so bad -- but perhaps the whole display is blurred. For what it's worth, my graphics card is a Radeon Mobility Express 200.

So -- does anyone have any ideas, besides those I've already tried, for sharpening up the appearance of the fonts?

Thanks.

[oshunluvr]

Change to Oxygen fonts and enable sub-pixel hinting on "slight" setting. I also found vertical RGB looked better to my eyes than regular (horizontal?) RGB.

Different video cards and monitors though, so YMMV.

[quiddity]

Change to Oxygen fonts and enable sub-pixel hinting on "slight" setting. I also found vertical RGB looked better to my eyes than regular (horizontal?) RGB.

Different video cards and monitors though, so YMMV.

Thanks for the reply. I'm afraid my mileage does indeed vary; Oxygen fonts don't look any better (worse, in fact) that some of the other options. In particular, they still look fuzzy. I've settled on Ubuntu fonts as the least-bad, but they're not great at all. The various anti-aliasing settings like sub-pixel hinting don't help, either.

I'm not the only person on the internet complaining about this, so I suppose something will be done, but nobody seems to have any ideas for quick fixes (apart from changing the font, playing with anti-aliasing...). So I guess I wait. Thanks in advance to whoever does the fixing!

[Snowhog]

You've told us what video card you have, but not if this is a laptop display or an external monitor (and what type it is).

[quiddity]

You've told us what video card you have, but not if this is a laptop display or an external monitor (and what type it is).

Good point; sorry. This is an LCD laptop display (is there more info I could give about type? I'm not quite sure what you're referring to).

I've noticed, by the way, that I have no options to change screen resolution, either under system settings or via xrandr. Perhaps that's unconnected.

[oshunluvr]

Good point; sorry. This is an LCD laptop display (is there more info I could give about type? I'm not quite sure what you're referring to).

I've noticed, by the way, that I have no options to change screen resolution, either under system settings or via xrandr. Perhaps that's unconnected.

That's not unusual. LCDs always perform better at their native resolution. You should verify that it's set correctly though. If it were set at something not optimal, that would definitely cause blurred images.

[quiddity]

That's not unusual. LCDs always perform better at their native resolution. You should verify that it's set correctly though. If it were set at something not optimal, that would definitely cause blurred images.

Thanks. Hmm, well -- the internet suggests that the screen's (maximum?) resolution is 1280 x 800. Does that mean that that's the native resolution? If so, we're maybe getting somewhere: the only option currently available to me is 1024 x 768.

[oshunluvr]

Yes, and for sure this is contributing. This is usually caused by xorg not properly detecting your screen. Sometimes bad EDID sometimes bad xorg.

You should start by collecting all the proper data for your screen: vertical and horizontal frequencies and native resolution. This is likely 1280x800 as you already discovered. A review of /var/log/Xorg.0.log should reveal more information as to what info in being detected.

There are a couple ways to solve this. xrandr can usually do it, an xorg.conf file can do it, sometimes a driver change can do it. There are 2 main driver for ATI cards - fglrx (closed) and radeon (open). I'm pretty sure you card is support by radeon but you'll have to look for fglrx support elsewhere (I don't "do" ATI )

I think the best way to do this is after you are on the best driver, create a correct xorg.conf file and fine tune your card/monitor. Then you can make a backup of it and never mess with it again.

Assuming you do not now have an xorg.conf file, a good way to start is to make a generic one. Log out of your desktop, hit CRTL-ATL-F1, log in, do these:

sudo service lightdm stop
cd /etc/X11
sudo X -configure

This should result in a file called xorg.conf.new . Now look at it:

cat xorg.conf.new | more

If it looks like you want to try it now, copy it and restart the DM:

sudo cp xorg.conf.new xorg.conf
sudo service lightdm start

If this causes your GUI/Desktop to crash (it might), go back to CTRL-ALT-F1 and end it:

sudo service lightdm stop
sudo rm xorg.conf
sudo service lightdm start

This should return you to your previous state. Either way, once you've done the above, post your xorg.conf.new file here for a look-see.

[quiddity]

Thanks very much for this. With regard to driver: yes, radeon supports my card, and that seems to be the driver being used.

I tried what you suggested; here's what happened:

When I ran X -configure, the program ran, but ended with a segmentation fault. Before ending, it created xorg.conf.new in my home directory, rather than in /etc/X11 (and yep -- I had definitely cd'd to /etc/X11).

I tried again; same result. So I cat'd the file in the home directory, didn't see anything to dislike, and so copied that as /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Starting DM didn't result in a crash -- things are exactly as they were (xrandr still offers 1024x768)


xorg.conf (should be same as xorg.new?) and xorg.0.log attached as txt files; let me know if there's a better way to do that.

[oshunluvr]

Did you use sudo with X -configure? Anyway - screen is not detected, obviously.

Try editing xorg.conf to something like:

Section "Monitor"
  Identifier "Monitor0" 
  HorizSync 31.5 - 90.0
  VertRefresh 60.0 - 60.0
  Option "UseEDID" "false"
  Option  "dpms"
  # 1280x800 @ 60.00 Hz (GTF) hsync: 49.68 kHz; pclk: 83.46 MHz
  Modeline "1280x800"  83.46  1280 1344 1480 1680  800 801 804 828  -HSync +Vsync
EndSection

Section "Screen"
  Identifier "Screen0"
  Monitor "Monitor0"
  Device "Card0"
  DefaultDepth 24
    SubSection "Display"
      Depth 16
      Modes "1280x800" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
    SubSection "Display"
      Depth 24
      Modes "1280x800" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

If this give you a messed up display, hit CRTL-ALT-F1 right away and kill X.

Also: I'm not at a linux box right now, so verify the above modeline in a terminal with gtf or cvt like this:

cvt 1280 800 60

[quiddity]

Did you use sudo with X -configure?

Yes -- sorry, should have been more specific.

As to the rest: I edited xorg.conf as suggested, with the corrected modeline (below). Restarted.

No messed up display, but no change to the display either, or to the available settings!

xorg.0.log seems to suggest it's using the xorg.conf file...

I'm going to have to leave this for this evening, but if you have any other suggestions, I'll try them tomorrow. Thanks again.

Modeline "1280x800" 83.50 1280 1352 1480 1680 800 803 809 831 -hsync +vsync

[oshunluvr]

Ok, when you get back at it, post the latest Xorg.0.log and we'll try the xrandr way to fix it.

[quiddity]

xorg.0.log seems to suggest it's using the xorg.conf file...

...but I've just had a closer look and I wonder if there may still be a problem with that. Line 21.249 says: Using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf"

But then:

21.627] (EE) Screen 0 deleted because of no matching config section.
[ 21.627] (II) UnloadModule: "modesetting"
[ 21.627] (EE) Device(s) detected, but none match those in the config file.

See attached. Is that significant?

[quiddity]

Just saw your reply. OK, well there's the log, anyway. I will try the other way tomorrow! Thanks.

[Simon]

I use xrandr to adjust my display I created this bash script;

 #!/bin/bash 
#This requires kdialog to be installed 
#Uses my native 1360x768 make the settings correct for your display.
ScreenRes=`kdialog --radiolist "Select Screen Resolution:" 1 1360x768 on  2 1280x768 off 3 1024x768 off 4 800x600 off 5 "Double Fake" off 6 "Zoom 2x" off`
ScreenID=$(xrandr | grep ' connected'| cut -d ' ' -f1)
case $ScreenRes in
    1) xrandr --output "$ScreenID" --mode 1360x768 --scale 1.0x1.0 --panning 1360x768
       ;;
    2) xrandr --output "$ScreenID" --mode 1280x768 --scale 1.0x1.0 --panning 1280x768
       ;;
    3) xrandr --output "$ScreenID" --mode 1024x768 --scale 1.0x1.0 --panning 1024x768
       ;;
    4) xrandr --output "$ScreenID" --mode 800x600 --scale 1.0x1.0 --panning 800x600
       ;;
    5) xrandr --output "$ScreenID" --mode 1360x768 --scale 2.0x2.0 --panning 2720x1536
       ;;
    6) xrandr --output "$ScreenID" --mode 1360x768 --scale 0.5x0.5 --panning 1360x768
       ;;       
    *) exit
       ;;
esac

When I type xrandr at the terminal prompt I get;

Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1360 x 768, maximum 2720 x 1536
DFP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
DFP2 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
CRT1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
CRT2 connected 1360x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 16mm x 9mm
   1360x768       60.0*+
   1280x768       60.0  
   1280x720       60.0  
   1024x768       60.0  
   800x600        60.3  
   640x480        59.9

Notice how it claims I can go as high as 2720 x 1536? That is virtual, and yes the fronts look like crap. Why do I use it? The screen shots give me higher resolution exposure, and it looks fine for some game graphics but fonts will be unreadable.

My xorg configuration file Screen Section;

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "aticonfig-Screen[0]-0"
	Device     "aticonfig-Device[0]-0"
	Monitor    "aticonfig-Monitor[0]-0"
	DefaultDepth     24
	[B]SubSection "Display"
		Virtual 2720 1536
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
	EndSubSection[/B]
EndSection

WARNING: Setting virtual too high could have adverse results. I once tried a much larger view and it locked the computer up chewing on all the graphics.
Set up a virtual section and you should be able to adjust your display to size to about anything you want.