643884 - fonts appear choppy / light on linux

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 458612

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[davidsteiner2010]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.15) Gecko/20110303 Ubuntu/10.10 (maverick) Firefox/3.6.15
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0

the fonts don't look as good and is harder to read as in firefox 3.6.

the different is clearly visible in the URL. on the left side we see firefox 4.0. on the right is firefox 3.6.15.

Reproducible: Always




Tested on Ubuntu 10.10 (fresh install a couple of days ago). No crucial changes were made to the configuration (all defaults regarding appearance).

Comment 1

[davidsteiner2010]

Attachment: screenshot showing the difference in font rendering (ff 4.0 versus 3.6)

Comment 2

[davidsteiner2010]

installing this ppa seems to fix the font rendering: 
https://launchpad.net/~mozillateam/+archive/firefox-stable

Comment 3

[George Carstoiu]

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:2.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0

I cannot observe the issue you have logged when comparing the two browser versions.

Am I to understand from Comment 2 that the issue is no longer present?

Comment 4

[davidsteiner2010]

"Am I to understand from Comment 2 that the issue is no longer present?"

It's still present in the version downloaded from firefox.com.
It's fixed in the version from the Ubuntu Firefox maintainers (the above link).

Comment 5

[Alex Pakhotin (:alexp)]

(In reply to comment #4)
> It's still present in the version downloaded from firefox.com.
> It's fixed in the version from the Ubuntu Firefox maintainers (the above link).

I can confirm this.
Fonts in the version downloaded from mozilla.com looked really bad. The one from the Launchpad PPA looks much better! Basically the same as 3.6.

Is it due to different compile options mentioned here: http://www.dwasifar.com/?p=1473 ?

Comment 6

[davidsteiner2010]

that could be it. about:buildconfig from the Launpad PPA has these options:

--enable-default-toolkit=cairo-gtk2
--disable-system-cairo

maybe these should be set on the official ff build?

here are all the build options:

--build=x86_64-linux-gnu --prefix=/usr --localstatedir=/var --libexecdir=/usr/lib/firefox-4.0 --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking --disable-silent-rules --srcdir=/build/buildd/firefox-4.0+nobinonly/build-tree/mozilla --disable-elf-dynstr-gc --disable-install-strip --disable-strip --disable-updater --enable-application=browser --enable-default-toolkit=cairo-gtk2 --enable-startup-notification --enable-pango --enable-svg --enable-mathml --enable-safe-browsing --with-distribution-id=com.ubuntu --without-system-jpeg --without-system-png --without-system-zlib --enable-chrome-format=omni --enable-optimize --enable-ipc --enable-tests --enable-mochitest --enable-ipdl-tests --disable-system-cairo --without-system-nspr --without-system-nss --disable-system-sqlite --disable-system-hunspell --enable-crashreporter --enable-official-branding --enable-gnomevfs --disable-gio --disable-debug

Comment 7

[Hashem Masoud]

As far as I know, Ubuntu uses its own fonts. You only have to know the configuration to enable it.