black is not black :(

[phil.n]

My problem is that text is not 100% black. I assume that it has something to do with either my graphics card or monitor settings.
I am running a Radeon 9600 gfx card and LG L1710b monitor on DVI.
I haven't updated any drivers or anything yet because i'm new to linux and will probably mess everything up beyond repair although I expect that this will be the suggested solution.
Also I used to get an annoying flicker with my screen but after playing around (not sure what i did) I managed to resolve this. Below is a small section of text to show you what i am getting.



Thanks in advance, hope I have included enough information.

Regards,

Phil

[crackers]

Are you talking about the "bin" and "boot" entries? Well, the reason they're not "black" is because ls now "colors" directory entries according to the scheme set forth in /etc/profile.d/colorls.sh. In this case, both "bin" and "boot" are directories, so according to /etc/DIR_COLORS, they get shown in blue. I find the coloring schemes to be very handy for determining what's what in a listing.

[phil.n]

nah mate, literally the black text is not completely black, there are elements of blue and red on the sides.

[crackers]

Oh, sorry - it was hard to tell what you were talking about...

That could be an effect of anti-aliasing. This is an artifact of the combination of the video card, the driver, the monitor, and the font-rendering system. Try turning anti-aliasing on the fonts off (both KDE and Gnome have that option). The other thing it could indicate is that the monitor's starting to lose focal control over the "guns" that paint the screen - you'll see this kind of effect on older monitors, especially ones that have been in use a lot.

[phil.n]

Thanks for that, it certainly has removed the funny colours from the edges but now I have horrible looking fonts . It isn't the age/quality of the monitor since it is a new tft which works fine with windows.
I think there must be some kind of driver problem because I have noticed that everytime I restart fedora the screen flicker comes back. All I have to do however is launch xvidtune, quickly change the display to 800x600 then back again and the flicker is gone.
Anyone got any suggestions?

Thanks again,

Phil.

[Shadow Skill]

I get the blurring effect with windows actually, I think it has to do mostly with how the fonts are handled by the OS and the monitor. Phil what kind of monitor is it and what is its max [native] resolution?

[phil.n]

The max resolution of the monitor is 1280 by 1024.
It is a LG L1710b monitor on DVI input.

Rgds,

Phil

[hornett]

Sounds to me like you need to switch from Subpixel to Non-subpixel rendering in the font preferences. The reason for the wierd colours is to do with how LCD monitors work - the colours make the text a lot sharper on them. Having it set to non subpixel will use grayscale for the font rendering (ad look muc better on a CRT monitor).

[phil.n]

Thanks I will look into this. Unfortunately I was using an old disc for my fedora install and it has just died so I wont be able to check until i get a new disc and fedora installed again. Thanks for all the help up to now though.

Regards,

Phil.

[darkstar]

To turn off sub-pixel hinting (and thus remove the halos) add the following line to your
.Xresources file:

Xft.rgba: none

Worked for me.

Greetings,
darkstar

[sideways]

In Gnome, you can set your font preferences using Applications->Preferences-Font.

This enables you to experiment with the smoothing and hinting levels