Arch Linux

qu.eed

Member

Registered: 2026-05-25

Posts: 2

Strange Font Issue Across System

Hi! I am having quite a strange issue with the fonts on my system. Many places on my system, specifically Electron applications (Slack), my terminal emulator (Kitty), and in notifications, the fonts will appear illegible, half of a character being corrupted, and the other half being completely filled. I notice that, in Kitty, the fonts behave well until I run a command that has a sizable amount of output, like cat-ing a file with >100 lines. I also notice that the issue does not occur in Firefox and QTerminal.

Troubleshooting so far:
I have unsuccessfully tried using a different font and disabling my compositor.

A link to my Xorg log:
Xorg Log

A picture of the issue (what is supposed to be the output of ls -al):

I am not sure what else to include, but I am more than happy to fetch it if asked.

mpan

Member

Registered: 2012-08-01

Posts: 1,597

Website

Re: Strange Font Issue Across System

Hello, it seems there is a bug caused by or made apparent by mesa 1.26.1, or possibly other package interacting with mesa updated around that time. See this thread for comparison.

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seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 75,718

Re: Strange Font Issue Across System

Bogus link, but see eg. https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=313669

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qu.eed

Member

Registered: 2026-05-25

Posts: 2

Re: Strange Font Issue Across System

Thank you so much! I do apologize for essentially duplicating another post, I wasn't able to find it. Honestly, I was scared that I was going to be told that my GPU was simply dying. Can I change the post to solved myself, or does a mod need to do that?

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 75,718

Re: Strange Font Issue Across System

Don't worry - this mesa issue currently comes up a lot

Please mark resolved threads by editing your initial posts subject - so others will know that there's no task left, but maybe a solution to find.
Thanks.

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How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc