Thunderbird / Betterbird (GTK3) wrong fonts after startup

Hello,

  • OpenMandriva Lx version: 25.01 (ROME)

  • Desktop environment (KDE, LXQT…): KDE Plasma6 X11

  • Description of the issue (screenshots if relevant): When I am running Thunderbird or Betterbird, gui is rendering different (maybe fallback) fonts in application.

And after changing just font size in settings, they are update with correct one:

  • Relevant informations (hardware involved, software version, logs or output…): Desktop PC, direct Rome Installation with nVidia Propriety Drivers.

There aren’t any errors in console, when I am running them from terminal. Do you know what could cause that ? How to avoid this ?

Are you running Thunderbird as a native application or as a flatpak?

Thunderbird as a native application installed from repository, Betterbird as native portable version downloaded from internet.I don’t know how close thunderbird font rendering is to firefox one, but I have not seen this issue in firefox.

Have you recently made any system options changes, such as resolution, scaling, etc.? Are you using X11 or Wayland?

As a test, you could try running either thunderbird or betterbird as a flatpak and see if you have similar or better results:

flatpak install org.mozilla.Thunderbird

or

flatpak install eu.betterbird.Betterbird
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This probably means AppImage or Flatpak. These are versions that include all of the libraries that you would normally use in a system so that it can be portable. This means, it does not share configs with your user profile and the fonts will be different.

I am using X11, for testing purposes I have installed Betterbird through flatpak too and this version is rendering correct fonts just from the start, so issue free.

@zeroability
I am pretty sure that it is just binary version, no appimage, but you are correct that this binary archive includes libraries too: betterbird-128.6.0esr-bb20.en-US.linux-x86_64.tar.bz2

So right now I can use flatpak version, but I am curious if someone else can confirm the same issue on their ROME installation. Maybe some gtk3 package should be additionaly installed for proper fonts configuration sharing / loading / rendering. OM Lx is my first time with KDE Plasma6, I have been more Gnome and GTK user for many years, so just no experience with running gtk apps on qt based DE.

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Yes, you may need to add GTK stuff since it might not be included by default.

Ok, I have found missing package causing that issue: plasma6-kde-gtk-config
After installing this, both native apps (thunderbird, betterbird) and other gtk3 apps are looking as they should with proper fonts rendering. Thank you all for help.

3 Likes

Thank you for your persistence in solving that.

How did you determine you were missing that package?

Lucky guess I think, I have just try to search through available/not installed packages in dnfdrake with “gtk” phrase. There was also a similar one with kde prefix - but it has a lot of dependencies, so I thought that it is dedicated for old version of KDE not a plasma6, then I just have found one with plasma6 prefix - this one had only one dependency.

But if you asking about how I figured out that this can be connected with some missing packages - I know that KDE/QT and Gnome/GTK were always try to go as separate, clean ecosystems by default. In the past, it was always better to find applications’ alternative compatible with your DE ecosystem instead of mixing QT and GTK just to have best clean look and app experience. If you needed to adjust some visual settings of not compatible applications, many times installing additional packages has been required.

3 Likes

Thank you. It’s always nice to see the troubleshooting steps people take. I am not a Linux genius, so I try to get all the guidance I can.

In fact, I have seen the same font issue on my laptop from time to time. I will take a look at my gtk packages as well. I am probably missing the same one as you.

1 Like