[BUG REPORT] Konsole from KDE4 is unusable with bitmap or with nonAA TrueType fonts

[artem]

..

[aorta]

Can anyone confirm this issue has been fixed in 195.36.08? And fixed properly, or just improved somewhat?

Fixed a performance regression with non-antialiased text in KDE4.

[artem]

This issue is indeed fixed, I can confirm that.

Thanks NVIDIA! I hope next time it won't take a year to solve such a bug.

[amelyst]

Originally Posted by artem

This issue is indeed fixed, I can confirm that.

Thanks NVIDIA! I hope next time it won't take a year to solve such a bug.

Well, this is definitely not the case with me. I have now upgraded to kubuntu 10.04 and use 195.36.15, which should have incorporated the fix.

The issue is still there. I have to use aliased fonts in the console to actually have some work done. The other applications use non antialiased truetype fonts and the performance is just horrible. Scrolling in any windows (konqueror, or dolphin) with long lists is just not bearable.

I have now waited for so long and hoped with the nvidia driver included in the lts version the problems would be solved, but that was wishful thinking. I may have to resort to the original plan and just switch hardware.

[drhirsch]

Did you consider using AA fonts for the other applications as well? This might be cheaper than switching hardware.

[artem]

amelyst

Please, attach your nvidia-bug-report.log.

[amelyst]

Ok, here is my attached bug-report log.

Did you consider using AA fonts for the other applications as well? This might be cheaper than switching hardware.

Of course I did. I did it since the problem surfaced over one year ago. These blurry fonts are just not working for me. And I did a lot of testing. To have to use it in konsole is e very weak compromise. The time I spend in the console is not so much compared to other applications. But now the filebrowser (dolphin and konqueror share the same code base here) are so slow, that fluid efficient work is no longer possible for me.

I am doing a lot of coding and find the non antialiased fonts (especially the microsoft core fonts) to be the least stress for my eyes during long hours.

At work I am running the same distribution (kubuntu 10.04) but with a radeon based graphics card and do not experience any slowdowns there.

It seems not to be the problem of nvidia alone, as several applications (all the gnome ones, or kmail) do not display this problem. There is even an open bug at the QT bug tracker, but they are assuming the issue resolved, because of the changelog entry from the nvidia driver stating the issue as resolved.

So it may be a good idea to press the qt folks too, to look into their code.

[Plagman]

To be clear, is the problem you're facing happening with bitmap fonts or TrueType fonts _without_ AA? Can you please take a screenshot of your font settings dialogs in KDE4 so that I can be sure I'm using the same exact font and AA settings as you are?

Thanks!

[amelyst]

Ok, here we go

Screenshots for the main font settings. You can see I use only the MS core fonts + Tahoma and have antialiasing disabled for the range from 0 to 12 pt.

The third screenshot is from my settings for konsole. In addition to that I use the following snippet in my .fonts.conf file to explicitly enable antialiasing for the font Liberation Mono.
This gives me good text display performance when working in the console.

<match target="font">
    <test name="family"> <string>Liberation Mono</string> </test>
    <edit name="antialias" mode="assign"><bool>true</bool></edit>
</match>

[jbo5112]

Here we are in year 4 of the problem. I'm wanting a 5pt bitmapped font in 4 konsole windows filling 2 1680x1050 LCD's with kubuntu 10.10 and compiz-fusion. However, there is a 10 second lag before what I type shows up, the mouse-based cube rotation barely functions (5-10+ seconds per frame), and the Konsole font selection makes everything else look fast (including program installs back when I used Gentoo). My hardware is a GeForce 8600 GT 256MB, a Core 2 Quad at 3.4 GHz, and 6GB DDR2, which I hoped could handle such a setup with ease. With a TrueType font, everything is much, much faster, but my system is still slow (18-20 fps when rotation cube w/ mouse, 25-30 fps if I close Chromium) and jerky (short freezes).

NVIDIA has been my card of choice for over a decade, even if I had to pay twice the price for half the performance, simply because of their Linux support, but this is some sorry performance. I don't know if compiz is really that hard on a video card, but know the lack of bitmapped font support is a terrible oversight. If I wanted blurry fonts, I would use a CRT and TrueType fonts look ugly at small sizes.

[artem]

10 seconds lag? Really??

Please, tell us which font you are using (and where we can download it too) and please, attach nvidia-bug-report information.

I smell something is wrong with your hardware/software configuration.

Meanwhile if you don't play games, try using nouveau driver.

[jbo5112]

Originally Posted by artem

10 seconds lag? Really??

Please, tell us which font you are using (and where we can download it too) and please, attach nvidia-bug-report information.

I smell something is wrong with your hardware/software configuration.

Meanwhile if you don't play games, try using nouveau driver.

Does nouveau support compiz? I thought compiz required hardware 3D acceleration, and nouveau didn't have it.

The font shows up as "Fixed [Misc]" in konsole, but I can't tell you where to download it. The lag gets continually worse as I try to have more things going at once, the more I switching among my konsole windows and tabs, and probably the larger my scrollback buffer gets. I will do okay if I'm just sitting there typing into a single terminal window, but I might as well dig up an old 386 for that. I got tired of comparatively large and illegible true type fonts that weren't all that fast, so I decided to brave bitmapped fonts again. Currently, I'm getting about a 1-3 second lag at times, but even at 10x as fast, it is quite bad (konsole 2.5, kde 4.5.1, compiz 0.8.6, nvidia 260.19.06, x.org 1.9.0, swap temporarily disabled).

For hardware I have a Core 2 Quad running at 3.4GHz, GeForce 8600 GT 256MB, and 6GB RAM. My xorg.conf is attached, complete with TV-out on a second card that I never got working. The only problems I can find on my end is that the system thinks my card has 512MB RAM and maybe I need a video card with more RAM.

I haven't yet filed a bug report, since this is a very well known problem with NVIDIA hardware. It looks like I might need to do so, but I'll wait on newer software. I hear the next version of compiz will be faster, and hopefully it will make it into the next version of Ubuntu (currently listed as 0.9.4? in Ubuntu 11.04). Qt marked the bug as close, since the problem was outside the scope of their software, which makes the issue harder to track. They should have either programmed a workaround or left it open and waiting on NVIDIA. It looks like NVIDIA closed their bug after they improved the performance, but I wouldn't call this fixed.