I’ve been using Kdenlive (on Ubuntu Linux) for quite a few years without any problems, but for a few a months now I have a problem with ugly fonts in Kdenlive’s user interface. And I don’t know why and what to do to get rid of these ugly fonts and to restore them with the intended fonts.
I’m using the latest Ubuntu LTS version (24.04.3 LTS) and the latest stable Kdenlive AppImage (25.12.1). I’m using Cinnamon desktop - but it makes no difference if I use Cinnamon or XFCE or Plasma. Neither the Gnome nor the Plasma font settings use a serif font, everything is set to Noto Sans/Mono or Liberation Sans/Mono.
Two days ago I found a tip somewhere on reddit to recreate the font cache usind fc-cache. The results were: Kdenlive used a fixed font (instead of this ugly serif, YEAH! but also instead of the nice san-serif font in every other dialog, Booh!). And, unfortunately, Cinnamon began to crash randomly. I found no other solution than remove ~/.config and to use a copy of a freshly installed new user’s ~/.config. Cinnamon runs stable again, but the ugly fonts are back, too.
My hope is that this is just caused by a missing font that Kdenlive uses in the status bar, in the Title clip editor or in the Clip Problems dialog. All the other dialogs and user interface elements look fine. May be a simple “sudo apt install foo-bar-font” cures this situation.
I don’t think that’s going to work, because it will be ignored by the AppImage and that’s designed for graphical capabilities to begin with if I recall even if it would work.
Try launching the AppImage from the terminal with a specific font-aliasing flag: FREETYPE_PROPERTIES="truetype:interpreter-version=35" ./Kdenlive-xxxx.AppImage
Sorry but I try search for online inform and AI too
What about .deb and other form ? does it work ?
Please don’t just repost untested ‘AI’ suggestions here.
They already suggest enough utterly ridiculous stuff from scanning the human created content here, we don’t need to reinforce that misbehaviour by feeding them back their own toxic dogfood.
The Ubuntu version has always been "old”, that’s the reason why I want to use the current AppImage. I don’t want to mess everything up by installing the deb, too. That will be my last try if anything else fails.
It won’t help you change the application font, but you can see what fonts the appimage can see if you create a subtitle clip and then open its font selector.
The application font is controlled by whatever is setting KDE’s defaults on your system, so you’ll need to figure out what the glue is between that and Cinnamon. If you’re using Plasma you should be able to configure it from its settings.
If that still doesn’t work, you might need something Better Than Ubuntu as your base - but we haven’t been seeing other reports of this, so it does seem like “Something You’ve Done” that’s a bit unique.
The subtitle form shows the ugly font. The font selector shows everything nice and smooth (don’t get confused of the mixed languages, I run Kdenlive for screeshots here using English but Plasma runs in German).
As I said above: everything is set to Noto Sans/Mono (no serif font anywhere) in Plasma and Liberations Sans in Cinnamon (no serif font anywhere). (see pics below)
Sure. If this wasn’t a unique problem I had solved it already by google-ing around.
There should be a better solution than rm -rf /* and reinstalling everything. And I’m to curious about this problem and really want to know what’s going on here. What is the cause that some dialogs always look pretty and some others always look ugly? Did the programmers use different fonts in the QT Dialog Designer (or whatever that is called). Maybe 1 pt/px smaller and therefor it is substituted by this ugly one on my side? Something like this…
I think you’re missing what I’m saying … this is very unlikely to be something that we did, which only you are having trouble with. It’s something you did, probably either by hand hacking stuff, or installing, or not installing something which created this problem.
So we can only toss you clues to try and help you figure out what that thing was.
There should be a better solution than rm -rf /* and reinstalling everything.
Sure. Figure out what you did to break your machine, and undo that thing!
This all is no offense, I’m thankful for every hint I can get from all of you, Please don’t get me wrong. I posted this in the Help category and not in the Bugs catgeory for a good reason.
I’ll keep investigating what has gone wrong. I didn’t hack anything, I’ve just installed kde-plasma-desktop next to cinnamon desktop and xfce4-desktop, switched from lightdm to sddm and back some times, tested the three desktops, and tried some standard themes. That was all, and may be this wasn’t a good idea and a Gordian knot appeared somehow that I have to find and to untie.
found a tip somewhere on reddit to recreate the font cache usind fc-cache.
…
found no other solution than remove ~/.config and to use a copy of a freshly installed new user’s ~/.config
etc. etc. And that’s just a subset of what you have told us about.
So there’s no offense, and we’d love to help you - I’m just saying that if you’re looking for a problem with kdenlive, you’re howling at the moon for all the applicable answers that is likely to give you. And if you’re asking us to tell you what you did that you haven’t told us about it’s going to be a long night of howling and guessing.
kdenlive is the raw ingredient you brought home fresh from a reputable grocer. But you’ve then gone and made a curry with it spiced from a bunch of random boxes you found in the shed, and a few things from the laundry after you read something on the internet about “tide pods”, whatever they are.
And now all your dinner guests are vomiting and dying.
You could try giving them some more powders from someone else’s shed. Or you could pump their stomachs, clean their plates, and find a reputable take-away to send some known-good food.
Both could work - but if you’ve already angered the voodoo gods this much, I wouldn’t bet on more random incantations as your most probable path to eternal salvation.
I posted this in the Help category and not in the Bugs catgeory for a good reason.