Switched from Gnome to KDE, and now my system font size (etc) all screwy!

Hey, SUSErs.

So, I’m trying to switch from gnome 3 to KDE4, due to some serious stability issues, and I’m having some trouble with the system appearance settings:

http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/6509/snapshot1wn.png

What’s the best way to get this stuff back to normal?

First make sure you are using the kde session and window managers
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10573557/Display_window_Manager/display-manager-kde4.jpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10573557/Display_window_Manager/window-manager-kde4.jpg
A reboot is required

Then in system settings, have a look at this thread
Unusual big icons and windows
it may help

Lower the DPI settings: Personal Settings -> Application Appearance -> Fonts -> Force fonts DPI: 96 DPI (or Disabled).

Thanks for the replies!

Forcing the DPI did the trick – it was on “disable” by default, so I set it first to 96, and then to 120, and settled on the latter, as it looks better on my tv/monitor.

Turns out the issue had nothing to do with switching from gnome, either. I decided to test out KDE in a parallel installation, or else I’d never know what problems were native and what were caused by remnants from the gdm setup, and the font DPI problem presented itself right after I installed the Nvidia proprietary drivers.

So things are pretty much fixed, except the font is still magnified during the login screen, which isn’t a dealbreaker or anything, but any ideas how to force the DPI for that?

You can add -dpi 96 to the options of the command starting the X server at different places

  • in the file /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc
  • in the value of **ServerArgsLocal **
    in /usr/share/kde4/config/kdm/kdmrc for kdm (gdm used to take 96 by default)
  • or add the following line in a X system or user resource file which would get parsed BEFORE the session manager starts:
Xft.dpi: 96.0
  • Last but not least, you can also try to add this option in the device section of your graphic card in /etc/X11/xorg.conf:
Option	"DPI"	"96x96"