After installing openSuSE 11.2 RC1 (gnome livecd) after many, many years of mainly Fedora use, I encountered the following issues:
Firefox font rendering is abysmal compared to Fedora or Ubuntu. Look at gmail for instance, it hurts my eyes. This is a showstopper for me, has this something to do with the way Firefox is compiled for openSuSE ?
The cpufreq applet in gnome is not correctly working, clicking on the applet does not let you choose your cpu frequency, instead nothing happens. This may be a permissions issue somewhere.
The restart button in Gnome does not restart your system, this is a known bug (see the 11.2 RC1 release notes).
Missing icons for some applications (i.e. “Remote Desktop Viewer” after I did a dist-upgrade.
The “System” tab in the “System Monitor” does not work, clicking on it crashes the application (gnome-system-monitor).
In order to “cut to the chase” how about putting up a screen dump so users can undertand what you are talking about ? … ie understand how fonts can hurt the eyes ? A site where you can host our example is here: ImageBam - Fast, Free Image Hosting and Photo Sharing
Did you install the application “Remote Desktop Viewer” yet? Have you run it yet?
> After installing openSuSE 11.2 RC1 (gnome livecd) after many, many
> years of mainly Fedora use, I encountered the following issues:
>
> 1. Firefox font rendering is abysmal compared to Fedora or Ubuntu. Look
> at gmail for instance, it hurts my eyes. This is a showstopper for me,
> has this something to do with the way Firefox is compiled for openSuSE
> ?
You can tweak the font rendering / style / face at your wish.
> 2. The cpufreq applet in gnome is not correctly working, clicking on
> the applet does not let you choose your cpu frequency, instead nothing
> happens. This may be a permissions issue somewhere.
I know I can tweak the Firefox settings, but it’s not helping in any way. Look at the two screenshots I posted above; compare the gnome desktop fonts in SuSE to the ones in Firefox. And then do the same comparison for the Fedora screenshot. The quality difference is very obvious. This has nothing to do with settings I’m afraid.
You mean you do not have a dual boot or tri boot ? And you posted when you were limited to a 2 hour response?
Your first post was at 13:25 today. You have received various replies from users trying to understand the problem, and a consensus that the fonts can be modified the way you want. But you now note you are reverting to Fedora because others have a different opinion as to how fonts look ???
Well, if you want more support, please advise. With some patience I’m certain it will be possible to tune your fonts (I’m not on a Linux PC right not so I can not offer any specific settings advice).
My experience when using Fedora forums, that the wait time varies from a few hours for a quick response, to a week or more for a more typical response, to infinity for no response. If the 2 hours that have gone by are too long for your patience, then IMHO you really either should:
go to IRC chat freenode #suse for a quicker resonse, or
simply stick with the distribution you like the most (no matter what it might be) as you will be hard pressed to find a response quicker than what you have just received.
Linux is linux. I’m happy to see users satisified with what ever Linux they use.
But IMHO its silly to distro hop and then after 2 hours give up. What a waste of time. Fedora happens to be my second choice for distro (except its fonts are ugly - BUT like openSUSE, they can be tuned ).
I recommend you return to openSUSE only when you have the patience to wait for a response with specifics helping you solve your problems. In fact, I recommend that for any distribution and not just openSUSE.
> I know I can tweak the Firefox settings, but it’s not helping in any
> way.
Of course it won’t help. This is not a “Firefox” issue but a “configuration”
issue
> Look at the two screenshots I posted above; compare the gnome
> desktop fonts in SuSE to the ones in Firefox. And then do the same
> comparison for the Fedora screenshot. The quality difference is very
> obvious. This has nothing to do with settings I’m afraid.
Sir, be patient.
As I (and others) already told you, you can “tweak” anything under openSUSE.
When it comes to fonts, there some things you should care about:
Font face, font style and font size.
Tahoma font will render in a different manner than Arial or Liberation.
Anti-aliasing or “fine tuning” anti-aliasing levels (rendering).
Some people like anti-aliasing, some not. I do not like anti-aliasing and
never used to it. So for people who like anti-aliasing, there are
also “anti-aliasing levels” they have to tweak, but this goes under DE
preferences, so in your case, this should be under Gnome’s desktop
preferences / font rendering details…
Any “noticeable” difference between distributions you may experience in font
rendering may also come from the “vga driver” being used or “xorg”
versions, but I guess they should be “minimal” and most
surely, “tweakeable”.
I found it interesting reading through this thread. You seem to certainly have some font issues, but I can honestly say that you appear to be a stand alone case. Gmail is fine on my machine, and on the machines at work.
Even though I don’t have the problem, I would be interested to know the fix if ever you find it. Don’t give up and go back to Fedora! You never make progress by going back ;o)
I would like to change the discussion from font rendering issue to liveCD issue.
I am actually testing a openSUSE 11.2 liveCD with gnome in an Intel Dual E2180 flat computer, and after some clicks opening applications, the nightmare starts: I cannot open anything, and if I even click any widget in the application bar, disappears. How could I get the logs for your debugging?
I am running the liveCD from a CD/RW in a Pionner DVD/RW internal unit connected via USB cable.
In my case the solution was to either add “acpi=off” as a boot code (where although the boot was incredibly slow, it worked) or go back to openSUSE-11.1. But I don’t like setting acpi to off, so I left openSUSE-11.1 on that laptop. I note other users with different hardware have found setting “i915.modeset=0” worked for them.
Did you try the openSUSE-11.1 live CD ? There is information on liveCDs here: Live CD - openSUSE and you can find openSUSE-11.1 liveCDs for download here: Software.openSUSE.org
I am moving the computer from Windows XP 32 bits to openSUSE 64 bits for the first time. The Windows XP Driver says “Intel(R) 82945G Express Chipset Family” Video BIOS 1217. I could not get more information, the LiveCD with Gnome for 64 bits environment crashes when I open the Hardware Information icon. Do you know any good application for Windows to know the details you need?
Greetings,
PD. The processor is E2160, not E2180. Sorry, my bad
You could boot to the liveCD, and press F3 when the green boot selection menu comes up, and then select “text” . Then boot. That will take you to a full screen text login. Login as user “linux” and use < enter > as the password.
Then type “su” (to switch to root/admin permissions) and use < enter > as the pass word.
Then type:
sax2 -p
what does that give you?
You can reboot with:
shutdown -r now
or you can shut down (but CD will still be in cd drive) with:
shutdown -h now
You could also (instead of rebooting) try the vesa graphic driver instead of the Intel graphic driver by typing:
sax2 -r -m 0=vesa
Note that is “zero equals vesa” and then configure the graphics.
The sax2 -p said:
Chip: 0 is -> Intel 945G 00:02:0 0x8086 0x2772 PCI intel
I could start the xwindow with wrong resolution. The option 1440x900 was not available in SaX2.
It looks like there is anything else that crashes the LiveCD, because a window appeared with the message:
“Main Menu” has quit unexpectedly
If you reload a panel object, it will
automatically be added back to the panel.
and the button “Don’t reload” and “Reload”. If I “reload”, appears another window:
The panel encountered a problem while loading “OAFIID:GNOME_MainMenu”.
Do you want to delete the applet from your configuration?
If I “delete”, nothing in the desktop and not “start” button in the menu bar, and I cannot close the xwindow, but I Alt-F1 to go to the terminal 1 and appears a lot of messages with:
Window manager warning: Failed to read saved session file /root/.config/metacity/sessions/1040…080020.ms: Failed to open file ‘/root/.config/metacity/sessions/1040…080020.ms’: No such file or directory
Reference this crash, what does it look like? Is it just the mouse cursor acting up ? What happens if you switch to console (ctrl-alt-f1) and back to x (alt-f7) ? Does that work ?
There are various bug reports raised on the Intel 945G:
I think you should look at each to see if any of them are applicable to what you are observing. Note you can log on to the Novell bugzilla page by using your forum username and your forum password.
Did you try any of the boot codes I noted in my previous post
acpi=off
i915.modeset=0 # or maybe try: i945.modeset=0
also try: maxcpus=1
Did you try my suggestion to press F3 and select the “text” mode, and boot to the full screen login, and after logging in type “su” followed by “sax2 -r -m 0=vesa” to use the vesa driver?
I’m going to stop now making recommendations, until after you have tried all the various suggestions.
Does it crash at this “wrong” resolution as well ?
