Weird text display distortions in ABrowser on Trisquel 8

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strypey
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Joined: 05/14/2015

Ever since I installed 64bit Trisquel 8 on my Lenovo X60 laptop, I have been having weird issues with the display of text in ABrowser. As a I scroll down, the text (nothing else) sometimes distorts. Sometimes making zooming in our out corrects the issues for a while, but then as I continue to scroll it can happen again. Does anyone have any idea why this might be happening, or what I might be able to do to correct it?

chaosmonk

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Joined: 07/07/2017

> Ever since I installed 64bit Trisquel 8 on my Lenovo X60 laptop, I have
> been having weird issues with the display of text in ABrowser.

This is a known issue with Trisquel 8 on the X60. The workaround is to
install the xserver-xorg-hwe-16.04 package.

strypey
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Joined: 05/14/2015

Thanks for the tip. I installed that package, shut down the laptop, and booted up again. Sadly, the issue seems to be persisting :( Is there anything I need to do to activate that package or get ABrowser to use it?

chaosmonk

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> Thanks for the tip. I installed that package, shut down the laptop, and
> booted up again. Sadly, the issue seems to be persisting :( Is there
> anything I need to do to activate that package or get ABrowser to use it?

Sorry, I misremembered. It was this thread[1] that led me to believe
this was the fix, but apparently it didn't work for me either.[2] Sadly,
the screen on my X60 died before I had a chance to fix this issue on it.

This is a wild guess, but maybe you need also need a newer kernel to
support the newer graphics stacK? What kernel are you running? If you
aren't sure, run

$ uname -r

[1] https://trisquel.info/en/forum/display-issue-probably-font-rendering-abroswer#comment-136054

[2] https://trisquel.info/en/forum/it-possible-apply-ubuntus-lts-enablement-stack-upgrades-trisquel-8#comment-135993

strypey
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Joined: 05/14/2015

> maybe you need also need a newer kernel to support the newer graphics stack?

I doubt that's the problem. I'm using Jxself's linux-libre repos. According to uname -r, my current kernel is:
4.19.72-gnu-rt26

chaosmonk

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>> maybe you need also need a newer kernel to support the newer
>> graphics stack?
>
> I doubt that's the problem. I'm using Jxself's linux-libre repos.
> According to uname -r, my current kernel is: 4.19.72-gnu-rt26

Sorry strypey, I wish I could be more help. The only instance I can find
of this issue being fixed is in this thread,[1] and the only changes the
OP seems to have made around this time don't seem to fix the issue for
others.

My suspicion is that the problem lies not with Abrowser, but with one of
its dependencies. As far as I can tell, X60 users only run into this
issue with Firefox derivatives installed from the package manager, not
from an executable tarball (which comes bundled with its dependencies).
If you haven't already, perhaps you could try an executable tarball of
Icecat and see if that works better for you. If you don't like having to
click on a file to launch the browser, I have some scripts to setup
Icecat to work as if it's installed normally.

Unfortunately, Icecat 60 has a few days left of security updates.[3]
Hopefully Icecat 68 will be ready soon.

[1]
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/it-possible-apply-ubuntus-lts-enablement-stack-upgrades-trisquel-8

[2] https://notabug.org/chaosmonk/mozilla-tarball-install

[3] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-esr-release-cycle

strypey
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Joined: 05/14/2015

No worries Chaosmonk, thanks for your replies, and sorry if that last reply of mine was a bit terse. It's helpful just to know this is a known issue (so no point filing a bug), as I couldn't find anything about it by keyword searching the forums. Your suggested solutions could have helped and I appreciate you taking the time to share them.

> As far as I can tell, X60 users only run into this issue with Firefox derivatives installed from the package manager, not from an executable tarball

This is helpful, thanks. IceCat doesn't seem to be a viable solution until version 68 is released. But I may be able to solve the problem by installing a different web browser, with different dependencies, or use a Firefox-based browser as an AppImage. I will have a look in add/remove programs for candidates.

chaosmonk

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> But I may be able to solve the problem by installing a different web
> browser, with different dependencies, or use a Firefox-based browser
> as an AppImage.

You might look into LibreWolf.[1] It's a Firefox fork which supposedly
prevents all unsolicited connections. According to their documentation,
their binaries are compiled with DRM support, but it is disabled by
default,[2] so as long as you don't go out of your way to enable it I
don't think you'll end up running any of that crap. I haven't gotten
around to testing this browser myself though.

There's also Hyperbola's Iceweasel-UXP, a fork of Basilisk, which is
itself a fork of pre-Quantum Firefox. It works okay, though I'm not sure
how to install it on a non-Arch-based distro.

[1] https://librewolf-community.gitlab.io/

[2] https://librewolf-community.gitlab.io/docs/drm/

Malsasa
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Joined: 12/01/2016

Hi masonhock, it looks like LibreWolf is very interesting, more than
Iceweasel Icecat Waterfox Basilisk or other Firefox derivatives. It's
a news for me. Thanks!

Masaru Suzuqi -under review-
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Joined: 06/06/2018

Same problem here on Trisquel8 and x60s. But there is a concept what is called priority or importance. Compared to other problems, I don't give a damn such a problem, though.

Edit: ◎ I don't give a damn for such a problem...

nadebula.1984
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Joined: 05/01/2018

I observe the same thing on Z61t (another 945GM-based ThinkPad, like X60 series).

Fenderbassist
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Joined: 03/24/2015

I have same issue with the otherwise very nice Trisquel 8 64-bit GNU/Linux (MATE),

on old desktop PC, a Compaq SR5410F. Intel Core2Duo "Wolfdale" 3.06 E7600, Intel 82G33/G31 Express integrated graphics, 4GB DDR-2.

Standard installation, 4.4.0-161-generic linux-libre kernel. Abrowser 68.0.2 (64-bit).