Kubuntu 8.10 fonts too large in VMWare

[TastyHuman]

I had Kubuntu 8.10 running nicely inside VMWare on Friday.

VMWare was bugging me to update to the latest vmware-tools package, so I did, then shutdown for the weekend.

Now, on Monday, when Kubuntu booted the fonts are all huge, maybe 14-16 point. This includes firefox toolbars, web pages and even the console text.

I went into appearance and the font sizes are all set to the defaults, typically 8 or 9 point.

Any ideas on what happened and how to fix this?

TIA

[dibl]

Re: Kubuntu 8.10 fonts too large in VMWare

Possibly go into KMenu>System Settings>Appearance>Fonts and change "Adjust All Fonts" to force a smaller default point size? Or else in the same panel you could play with "Force Fonts DPI", maybe. Kinda guessing here -- I haven't seen the problem.

[TastyHuman]

(solved) Re: Kubuntu 8.10 fonts too large in VMWare

Thanks for the suggestion.

After fiddling with it for a bit I settled on changing all DejaVu Sans fonts from point size 9 to 6.

It still doesn't look quite as nice as it was originally but more fiddling will probably fix it up. I don't understand why vmware tools caused a global change like that.

Anyway, your help is greatly appreciated.

[dibl]

Re: Kubuntu 8.10 fonts too large in VMWare

Did you in install the SVGA driver in VMWare? That's the one I use to run Win XP in a VMWare Player window on Kubuntu Linux. I've never seen any problem with screen fonts on it.

[TastyHuman]

Re: Kubuntu 8.10 fonts too large in VMWare

No, I used whatever the default is for the NVIDIA card on this machine.

I spoke a bit too soon. Although adjusting all fonts to point size 6 fixed the desktop and konsole it didn't fix other apps like firefox and my eclipse development environment. They were still nearly unusable due to the giant point size. Your other suggestion to play with the Force Fonts DPI option fixed it all. After changing that option from Disabled to 96 DPI it now really seems to have fixed the problem for all apps.

If I have further problems I'll try the SVGA driver to see how it works if it supports my big widescreen monitor.

Thanks again.

[dibl]

Re: Kubuntu 8.10 fonts too large in VMWare

Because VMWare is actually riding on your installed OS, it does not directly access your graphics card -- it is "translating" from your running OS. So you can't assume that what works for your nVidia card on your installed OS will work in VMWare -- it doesn't "see" your nVidia card. You might do better with VESA.

[TastyHuman]

Re: Kubuntu 8.10 fonts too large in VMWare

It's mostly working but some things are still screwy.

For example, when the cursor hovers over the speaker icon on the KDE panel the pop-up reads in a nice 9 point font. When it hovers over the Klipper or "world" ethernet icons the pop-ups are rendered in a giant 16 point font. Shouldn't most of those apps use the font settings described in the appearance system settings? Those are all set to 9 point.