Help! Sucky Fonts Hard to Read

[onosendai58]

No prob. Also, 2.6.3 LTS may be the most up-to-date, barring 3.0. Glenn went back to plain 2.6.3 and updated everything just recently, thus creating the LTS part. It`s meant to be up-to-date and to last a long time if I understand correctly.

[Driver]

I do not know how to capture and post a text list of a directory. Things were simpler with my Commodore 64, where I could just type LOAD "$",8 and then LIST, lol. So I made a full screen capture (notice that there is no title bar on the window). I did that and am posting it because I do not know which files might have the answer.

I see that there is a /log/fsck directory. It is empty. That is mildly surprising, because something on my system is definitely fscked.

One thing that I did notice on my own is that there is a fontconfig.log file. I glanced at its contents and saw that there are a number of truetype fonts mentioned. I do not believe that I actually have them on my system - and I'm pretty sure that I did in past versions of Ultimate Edition. Could that be a part of my font issue - do websites use them? I will attach that file to this post as well.

I believe that I might have two real issues: My system is older and underpowered for much of the eye-candy that seems to be activated by default. And I believe that I might not have a "full" and proper installation; I have had trouble in the past installing things on my laptop and it took three tries - with a known good .ISO - this time before the installation app would complete instead of erroring out.

If that is the case:

I would much rather repair than reinstall because I feel that I have a better chance in saving a given file to my hard drive than I would in gambling on reinstalling - which is kind of permanent once I get to the "format partition" stage, after all. Am I correct in assuming that IF I find that one or more files are missing or corrupt that I can replace them "on the run?"

As for thinking that the default settings might be higher than my system can comfortably support, I have less (visible) issues when I start in "Gnome with no effects" mode. Most notably, I initially have regular application windows in either mode of Gnome. But in normal mode, every time I press the Alt-Space combination to get the menu that allows me to minimize, close, et cetera, instead of getting that menu the "box" that is the application window - I use the term window for both windowed apps and full-screen ones here - including the title bar with the minimize/restore/close buttons disappears. And when it does, that is exactly what happens; the contents of the window remain and are not resized to take advantage of the missing elements (as would happen if, for example, one pressed F11 in Firefox to go to "fullscreen mode"). Although if I click on the application's representation on the bottom panel to minimize it and then click again to maximize it, the window contents then do fill the screen. ... When I start in "no effects" mode, every time that I press the Alt-Space combination to bring up the aforementioned menu... I get it.

There are some other "glitches" that I notice. One in particular that I remember is that when I use my mouse to activate the Gnome menu and then move my cursor around so as to open the various sub-menus, sometimes I am left with... lines(?), as if I am left with the vertical outlines of one of the previous sub-menus, like when I moved the mouse to a different window heading the screen was not properly redrawn. But I still see the eye-candy effect that occurs when the new sub-menu pops up, so I am not sure what is going on.

I may attempt to reinstall in a few days if I cannot get a handle on things. But I'd rather - and do - consider that as an emergency step.

Thanks again.

EDIT: PS I forgot to mention that when I installed Ultimate Edition 2.7 there were a number of eye-candy effects enabled by default that I hadn't previously used. They worked fine (AfaIK), although as I am not by any means a "power-user" - the most difficult activity I do is watch videos on free Hulu (and that with difficulty as I had not been able to reliably watch in full-screen for more than a minute or so at a time) - so I do not know how heavily (or not) they taxed my system. If anyone has a list of what effects, Compiz or Emerald or whatever the case may be, that were enabled by default in Ultimate Edition 2.7 and which ones are enabled by default in 3.0, that might help. Then again, it might not because I am coming to suspect (realize?) that my install may be damaged.

[pch.shot]

Glad you got it resolved. Why don't you start a new topic under how tos explaining how you have resolved all your issues using the kiss theory.