Eugene O’Neill & KDE: Help!

I recently switched my GTK+ Appearance to Rayleigh to get Banshee to run on my KDE laptop, but after two days of that Banshee crashed and the system font has everywhere changed to something unreadable. Letters are too thin, the eye strain is too much. I tried switching back to Oxygen, but while it seems to take, the screen fonts remain the same. Rebooting, renaming, re-everything is not working.

Add to that a bizarre dream I had last night.

Eugene O’Neill was still alive, had grown a long gray beard, had donned thick glasses (he kind of looked my the father of my boyhood friend, Chuck Coonrod), and had joined a construction crew somewhere in the south. He was leaning over a shovel lecturing Barack Obama, who was visiting the site, on how to improve test scores.

So you can see I am no shape to post anything intelligible.

Update Here is a picture from a web page to show you how ugly the font has become. I have tried everything I could think of to restore the original beauty, but no joy. I changed the fonts, both in the system and in Firefox (the problem is not just there, but everywhere), I turned on and off aliasing and font DPI, I changed screen resolution and refresh rate, I have tried switching to Gnome and Unity. All exhibit the same problem.

I am therefore at a loss and welcome any ideas.

kde type

17 Comments

  1. Rod

    I hope you get better soon. I googled Eugene O’Neill and got no hits at all. Chuck, however, is well known in Indiana.

  2. Person of Choler

    “I recently switched my GTK+ Appearance to Rayleigh to get Banshee to run on my KDE laptop….”

    We seem to have come a long way from Fortran IV on 80 column punch cards, but I don’t know where we are.

  3. Matt

    We are here.

    I may not know where I am going or where I came from but I am never lost. I always know where I am, I am here.

  4. BobKC

    Maybe you should leave the vodka over “there”.

  5. The committee decided several months ago the font you think you despise is best for everyone. It is now going universal. The committee is using your blog to insert the font into systems all over the world. Once inserted, within 48 hours it becomes the system default. You may not understand this now, but some day you will come to thank us. You have played your part extremely well, and will be rewarded.

    s/The Committee

  6. Matt

    I don’t do vodka or any other intoxicating substance.

    I do however have a twisted sense of humor.

  7. DAV

    Looks like VL Gothic. Could have been worse. Could have been Fangsong ti.

    Where exactly are you having this problem? Firefox only? Or do you really mean everywhere? If it’s Firefox only there’s an option to override the site fonts that might have been set.

    Try using a different account or log in as root and see it the problem follows you.

    Try checking your Accessibility settings

    If it’s truly everywhere. Start looking at the settings in /etc/fonts

    Banshee probably crashed because somehow a stray horn was stuck in it.

  8. DAV

    Or, FWIW, maybe one of the Khmer OS fonts.

  9. Try Windows.

    “Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile.” — Bill Gates

  10. Briggs

    DAV,

    I believe you’re right. It will Billy.

    The problem is everywhere, meaning all windows, not just Firefox. However, I did not try to log on as root, which I will do next.

    Update A guest account was beautiful; no problems. Back home I tried every configuration file I could think of, but obviously missed the right one. So I whacked them all and logged in fresh. And now all is well. Except for the minor inconvenience of reconfiguring an application or two. But I can at least read the screen without eye strain again. Thanks.

  11. DAV

    Great news.

    Now try installing Banshee on the A train and see if it makes it to Harlem.

  12. Noblesse Oblige

    I recently read Pauline Maier’s excellent book, “Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution.” It is a chronicle of each state’s ratification process. These people were very smart, sophisticated, and rational. Even though there was no experience anywhere to guide their thinking, they could discern both the advantages and potential pitfalls of what they were buying into. I was amazed at how these people anticipated exactly what is happening today — the limitless grasp of the central government despite the ‘so called enumerated powers.’

  13. DAV

    Speaking of fonts, the one you’ve picked for the default font here kinda sucks. Your “ugly font” looks a whole lot better. Personally, I prefer Deja Vu or Bitstream Charter. Deja Vu is round and a bit feminine. Bitstream is more a Manly Font. Too bad linux doesn’t have the proprietary Arial and Verdana fonts. Deja and Bitstream are fairly close to them though.

  14. j ferguson

    Noblesse Oblige,

    ” Even though there was no experience anywhere to guide their thinking, they could discern both the advantages and potential pitfalls of what they were buying into. ”

    Maybe the English experience written up in great detail in History of England by David Hume in the 1754-62 was a guide. It is astonishing how many elements of our constitution respond to problems which generations of English encountered with their central government.

    We owe a lot to the creativity of several of their princes, James II in particular, in concocting schemes adverse to the public interest and in so doing giving us clear ideas of what should be forbidden.

    It took me along time to read the kindle version of the 6 volumes. It was worth the time.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *