Good morning all,
I have just updated my XBMC installation to version 13 from the Packman repository.
On rebooting I’ve found that the menu screens of xbmc are showing no text at all.
As below
http://flickerluke.co.uk/pics/xbmc1920_resized.png
I was just wondering, has anyone else seen the same behaviour?
A google search finds previous problems of this type, mostly related to graphics driver updates.
Working fine here, using open source radeon driver.
I’m having the same issue on my desktop using Nvidia’s 331.67 drivers with a Geforce 660 Ti; however, XBMC works flawlessly on my laptop with 3rd gen Intel graphics.
Haven’t tested out the beta drivers yet.
Happy to report back with positive results after trying beta driver 337.19 from Nvidia.
Hi there,
Thanks for the replies.
I can confirm the issue seems to be with the current nvidia drivers from the repo.
I installed the beta, as Wrath5000 did, and xbmc is functioning correctly.
Thanks for the tip!
Cheers,
T
Sorry for such a stupid question, but how to install those beta drivers?
Thanks
Hello there,
You will need to go to the Nvidia site and download the beta driver for linux
and install it manually.
Here’s a pretty good guide.
http://monsterbeee.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/my-notes-manually-install-proprietary.html
I didn’t need steps 4 and 5 of that guide for whatever reason. (I assumed the installer dealt with it)
Just be careful, if something goes wrong, you’ll be stuck in text mode, without a graphical shell
until you can fix it.
I can also confirm that loading Nvidia’s 331.67 driver down loaded from Nvidia’s website fixed the problem for me. Follow the instructions on the site.
Note I had to run “zypper remove nvidia-gfxG03-kmp” first to remove the existing nvidia driver before it would install.
Then “sudo ./NVIDIA-Linux-*-337.12.run” and XBMC has text again.
herbert69
Thank you!
Done it!
Just need to:
make it executable $ chmod +x NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-337.19.run
log off X init 3)
uninstall old drivers zypper remove nvidia-gfxG03-kmp
install new ones ./NVIDIA-Linux-86_64-337.19.run
and reboot init 6
And magic!!! texts are back again in XBMC!!!
But still I can’t get it… How Nvidia drivers are connected to XBMC fonts!?!
Thank you!
NVIDIA is graphics everything graphic is effected by graphic drivers. The text was not actually missing it was just the same color as the background ie rendered wrong.
Well I think it has nothing to do with the nvidia driver version, but with a conflict with the Mesa driver. swrast (software rasteriser) should not be used as the nvidia card has HW acceleration. swrast is provided by Mesa.
ldconfig -p ¦ grep libGL.so
showed the 2 different location, the nvidia provided sources are in /usr/X11/lib… while the Mesa once are in /usr/lib…
I did de-install Mesa-libGL1 with yast and the packages depending on it (actually I had to de-install it twice as it was not completely removed by the first time).
and xbmc had readable text again.
So looks to me by reinstalling nvidia drivers, as described by the previous authors, the load order was changed and that is why it worked, not because of the drivers themselves.
Thanks for the updated info! I’ve been experiencing stuttering with playback on XBMC, and wonder if that, too, has to do with Mesa. I’ll try to poke around when I have a little more free time.
Came across the same issue with XBMC in 13.2 with proprietary Nvidia drivers offered in the repository (340.58-31.1 as of writing). Text was rendered properly after uninstalling Mesa-libGL1; however, Chrome needs that package for installation, and I like the built-in Netflix support of Chrome.
I removed the rpm-based drivers and installed the beta driver 343.13 “the hard way” and now have text rendered in XBMC and Netflix via Chrome. The stuttering I had previously noticed is now gone as well.
Let there be entertainment! 
A better workaround than uninstalling Mesa-libGL1 can be found here:
http://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/498989-13-1-NVIDIA-libGL-renderer-problem?p=2670526#post2670526
We also found out the real cause of the problem, see in the other thread as well if your interested.
Hint: It’s actually Samba’s fault… 
This thread really helped me, now my XBMC is having the text again, thanks. But another thing I want to ask about XBMC, mild horizontal tearing really annoyed me even during the menu/title scrolling. Currently I am using nvidia driver G03, tearing effect only in XBMC and not from other apps. Is this nothing to do withe removal of the Mesa-libGL1?
Do you have vertical sync set to “Always Enabled” in the XBMC preferences?
Like this;
http://i.imgur.com/DxPXbT5.png
( System -> Video Output )
ahhh, that’s working, now no more tearing rotfl! thanks to the long time SuSE lurker lol!
A samba update including a fix for this has been released today.
So Kodi (as XBMC is named now) should work soon even with openSUSE’s nvidia driver packages.
The package is being rebuilt at the moment, if there are no problems the “fixed” package should hit the mirrors in some hours… 