[Solved] Fonts/looks in MiniMe KDE

[ezas]

Yesterday and today I've been installing 2010 MiniMe and I'm pretty happy with how its going, network interface, printing, etc.

But one problem area has been fonts and looks.

The fonts in GTK apps looked like drek. I sort of fixed that with this command I found on the web:

ln -s /etc/fonts/conf.avail/10-autohint.conf /etc/fonts/conf.d/

which did help but the fonts don't seem as clear as I recall they were with KDE the full install. The still look a  little jaggy to me. (this command was from a blog posting in 2008)

I didn't need to run this command on my full install (built up from the first release of 2010) so that makes me wonder what the change was. It makes me wonder if there is a package I yet need to install to get all the theme/font goodness of the full install.

One difference was on my old full install I had installed the Gnome desktop which I have not done on this MiniMe install.  I also do not have any of the KDE SDK pacakages installed. But for the most part I have about 90% of the same user apps installed, including a fair amount of Gnome Apps. (deluge, banshee, etc)

I was looking through my home folder at hidden files/directories in my backup partition, just looking for things I might have missed in moving over and I noticed that in .fonts.conf had this line: ~/.fonts

which the new MiniMe .fonts.conf does not have.

I also noticed that in my backed-up full install I had this hidden directory: .qt
which has this one file: qt_plugins_3.3rc

with lines that look like this: (just a few as examples)

[usr]
lib/qt3/plugins/inputmethods/libqimsw-multi.so=30300 3 i686 Linux g++-4 full-confige 2010-01-11T05:25:42
lib/qt3/plugins/inputmethods/libqimsw-none.so=30300 3 i686 Linux g++-4 full-config 2010-01-11T05:25:42
lib/qt3/plugins/styles/libqcdestyle.so=303003 i686 Linux g++-4 full-config 2010-01-11T05:25:42
lib/qt3/plugins/styles/libqcompactstyle.so=30300 3 i686 Linux g++-4 full-config 2010-01-11T05:25:42

Besides the .qt directory a 'lib/qt3' directory on my new MiniMe installation does not exist.

I looked in synaptics and found that libqt3 is installed along with qt3-common. I found on the web that the files/dirs in these lines are supposed to be in libqt3.

It concerns me that I had to run that Sym link command to enable hinting on the GTK fonts and this difference in the absence of the /lib/qt directory.

Oh, one last thing in case it might matter is that my MiniMe boot disk was a bad burn (when I burned it in K3B (at 4x speed) it passed verification, but it did not pass the Media Check in the boot menu. But before I figured that out it had gotten far enough in the install to have wiped out grub. So I installed from a liveUSB stick that I had made just goofing around and the install went with out a hitch and everything has been running well.

(turns out my drive was dirty and is now clean and doing good burns again)

The default theme in the full install always impressed me with how well the GTK apps looked with no extra configuration needed. I'd like to feel like I was getting all those little theme touches in this MiniMe install.

Any ideas where the differences might have come in?

Thanks in advance for any advice/ideas

Edit: I just noticed one of those little things that makes me wonder about the rendering, my tray panel is 'hiding' the icons of GTK apps. First I thought it was just not resizing but when I hovered, I got the Banshee context menu and it does the same thing with deluge, amarok on the other hand is displayed. The panel background is the only theme change I've made so I switched it back to glassified and the same thing happens.

[ezas]

I've decided to reinstall checking the md5sum on both the download and the CD burn.

If the fonts/theme don't come out looking right I'll switch to the full install and just remove what I don't want.

[ezas]

Booting from a new liveCD things look much better. I checked the md5sum on both the download and the burn and when I burned I did a verification AND ran the media check from the boot menu. I'm thinking this is a good CD.

I've got my fingers crossed for the MiniMe installation.

[djohnston]

I'm not a KDE or qt expert, so someone may come along and correct me here. After your MiniMe re-install is complete, take a look at the fonts section in qtconfig and compare them to what you had before, if possible. To start qtconfig, just type it in a terminal.



Also, KDE4 uses qt3 & 4 libraries whereas KDE3 used qt3 ones.

[ezas]

Thanks I'll look at that since this is the first I've heard of it.

Everything is gravy now. I have the sexier task panel, my GTK icons don't 'hide' in the tray panel and and now I have a Screensaver module in configure your desktop and the font's in firefox look perfect.

I learned my lesson. It pays to check md5sum.