Lubuntu 23.10: some text became unreadable during a distribution upgrade

[Jeremy Bícha]

Test Case
---------
- Install Lubuntu 23.04
- Open a terminal and run this command then perform the upgrade to 23.10:
do-release-upgrade -d -m desktop -f DistUpgradeViewKDE

What Happens
------------
The upgrader itself remained readable as did window titles etc.

However, text in the about:welcome page in Firefox became unreadable. This was fixed by restarting Firefox. Therefore, I'm setting this severity to Low.

Where?
-------
Also with Ubuntu Desktop, Kubuntu and Ubuntu Budgie. Probably everywhere Firefox is available.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 23.10
Package: ubuntu-release-upgrader-core 1:23.10.8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 6.5.0-9.9-generic 6.5.3
Uname: Linux 6.5.0-9-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.27.0-0ubuntu5
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: unknown
CrashDB: ubuntu
CurrentDesktop: LXQt
Date: Tue Oct 10 11:50:07 2023
InstallationDate: Installed on 2023-10-10 (0 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Lubuntu 23.04 "Lunar Lobster" - Release amd64 (20230417)
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: ubuntu-release-upgrader
Symptom: ubuntu-release-upgrader
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to mantic on 2023-10-10 (0 days ago)
VarLogDistupgradeXorgFixuplog:
 INFO:root:/usr/bin/do-release-upgrade running
 INFO:root:No xorg.conf, exiting

[Ubuntu QA Website (ubuntuqa)]

This bug has been reported on the Ubuntu ISO testing tracker.

A list of all reports related to this bug can be found here:
https://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/qatracker/reports/bugs/2038946

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

The webpages, where you noticed text becoming unreadable, were those possibly Ubuntu/Launchpad pages which prompt the use of the Ubuntu font if available?

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Lubuntu screenshot attached.

Also happened the same way with Kubuntu

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Ah, ok. But that is not really a web page, is it? If I would guess I'd say it is the FF snap promoting the use of the Ubuntu font for the initial dialog and beyond the control via dconf settings.

As regards Kubuntu I'm pretty sure they use Noto as far as possible, and I think Lubuntu does so too.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

I only noticed this issue on the about:welcome screen which I believe only shows the first time Firefox is ran.

I didn't see it on other about:about pages but maybe they were being run in separate processes after the font upgrade already happened.

Simply restarting Firefox was enough to get about:welcome displaying correctly again.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Do you have some idea how it could be avoided?

The idea, as regards the display of the upgrader itself, and which both you and I mentioned, was to use some non-changed font temporarily. And that is hopefully in place now for this cycle for the affected flavors.

But otherwise the general advice is to not run programs unnecessarily during the upgrade, right?

At this time I tend to think that trying to eliminate all instances of unreadable text due to changed fonts during upgrade wouldn't be worth it. Aka "won't fix".

But maybe I'm missing something.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Yes, I'm ok with wontfixing this issue. This was just trying to be comprehensive following up from the other issue.

But so far, Firefox is the only app I saw affected and even then it was only in a fairly obscure place.

[Chris Guiver (guiverc)]

Sorry, as stated in comment #32 of the other bug report, I performed a release-upgrade using the command

do-release-upgrade -d -m desktop -f DistUpgradeViewKDE

and did not experience any issues, but I would NOT have had firefox open.

This is an issue we can easily document in release notes (my view).