Created attachment 1684076 [details] Bugzilla Firefox vs chromium-freeworld Description of problem: Firefox in Fedora 32 KDE spin showing poor font rendering by default, fixed with local font .conf. Not observed on Fedora 31 KDE, but may relate to more recent Firefox versions. Have seen other reddit reports of this on KDE and Gnome Workstation. How reproducible: 100% on F32 KDE Beta and RC6, Firefox 74 & 75. Tested on clean installs on 2 systems with 1080p displays. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Open Firefox. 2. Observe poor font rendering, eg: https://bugzilla.redhat.com , https://old.reddit.com/r/linux Actual results: Visibly very poor font rendering in Firefox. Expected results: Better font rendering in Firefox, as seen in previous releases and other distros . Additional info: Improved with below .conf: <?xml version='1.0'?> <!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM 'fonts.dtd'> <fontconfig> <match target="font"> <edit name="antialias" mode="assign"> <bool>true</bool> </edit> <edit name="autohint" mode="assign"> <bool>false</bool> </edit> <edit name="hinting" mode="assign"> <bool>true</bool> </edit> <edit name="hintstyle" mode="assign"> <const>hintslight</const> </edit> <edit name="lcdfilter" mode="assign"> <const>lcddefault</const> </edit> <edit name="rgba" mode="assign"> <const>rgb</const> </edit> </match> </fontconfig>
Defect still present with Firefox 76. I can only reproduce on Fedora 32 KDE spin, F32 Workstation is OK. If this should be against another component please let me know.
I am using using Firefox 79 on the KDE spin and can also reproduce this issue.
Poor font rendering still the default in F33 KDE spin. Missing fontconfig still needs to be manually added for normal font rendering.
(In reply to pimk1n from comment #3) > Poor font rendering still the default in F33 KDE spin. > > Missing fontconfig still needs to be manually added for normal font > rendering. Can you please explain what's the problem here? Do we need to install any extra package or so? Thanks.
Created attachment 1720344 [details] Comparison of F33 KDE Spin Firefox with and without fontconfig
I have added a new screenshot from F33 KDE Spin showing issue. This is reproducible KDE Spin only from F33 1.3 Beta iso and installed/updated systems. 1080p only tested. This was described to me as "It seems Firefox doesn't use font configuration provided by desktop environment. " Issue started with Firefox around Fedora 32 KDE Beta, and still an issue with Fedora 33 KDE Beta. Not an issue in Workstation. The creation of a fontconfig does still resolve issue and gives fonts as normally expected, the example in my first report is still what I use to resolve on F33.
I have tested a few other KDE distros, Fedora KDE spin is the only one that has this font issue in Firefox. Whatever changed with Plasma 5.18, Firefox 74 or Fedora 32 onwards, at least 3 other contemporary KDE distros are not affected. Manjaro KDE Plasma: 5.19.5 Firefox: 81 Functional font smoothing in Firefox. KDE Neon Plasma: 5.19.5 Firefox: 81 Functional font smoothing in Firefox. openSUSE Leap 15.2 Plasma: 5.20 Firefox: 78.3.0esr Functional font smoothing in Firefox.
Created attachment 1766906 [details] Firefox font rendering 34 Beta KDE spin Issue remains with Firefox in Fedora 34 KDE Beta. Default font rendering seen in Firefox is poor in 34 KDE spin compared to 34 Workstation or any other tested KDE option such as OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. Fonts OK outside of Firefox. Whatever changed in Firefox/KDE around 32 Beta time is still causing problem with this in F34 KDE, but not in other spins/distros. The only common factor amongst the variety of devices tested is that they all have 1080p displays, perhaps this is not so obvious at other resolutions.
For me, the problem exists even in default (GNOME) installation of Fedora 34; can confirm that it is much better visible on a 1080p display (naturally).
I can also confirm that writing a .fonts.conf file in the home directory, using contents recommended in this bug description, alleviates the font rendering (Firefox still uses slightly different font size than what's set for other apps).
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Fedora 32 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2021-05-25. Fedora 32 is no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug. If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version. If you are unable to reopen this bug, please file a new report against the current release. If you experience problems, please add a comment to this bug. Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.
This problem still exists in Fedora 34. Seen in Plasma/X11 after upgrading from F33. In particular, kerning is absolutely terrible. (Will attach a screen shot in a bit.) The ~/.fonts.conf workaround above does "de-uglify" Firefox fonts, but it also affects other applications (Thunderbird) in negative ways, so it isn't a real solution.
Created attachment 1792187 [details] Poor kerning in Fedora 34
As this was closed, but not resolved, I raised another bug under fontconfig: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1965684 I have been happy with reddit provided solution to just create below symlink: sudo ln -s /usr/share/fontconfig/conf.avail/11-lcdfilter-default.conf /etc/fonts/conf.d This symlink is present in other distros with KDE, such as Debian 11, which does not then show such poor default font quality in Firefox. From my testing of modern alternatives only Fedora KDE has not corrected this regression. How do we bring this to the attention of someone interested in KDE spin?
I think this needs to be moved to fonts-filesystem.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 1965684 ***