Since a few days ago, Visual Studio Code badly displays fonts. I'm currently under Debian Buster with Mate as the desktop environment. As I don't know how to correctly describe the display, here are some screenshots (it's particularly visible in the fourth one) :
Here are the actions I remember having done before noticing the problem :
- Creating a backup with Back In Time (I doubt the problem comes from this one)
- Upgrading from Debian "Stretch" 9 to Debian "Buster" 10
- Installing Firefox Quantum, libfontconfig1, fontconfig-config and libnss3 from Sid (following this site)
And, finally, here are the tests I've made around this problem :
- Using a new desktop environment (KDE Plasma) : the problem does not occur but I'd like to keep Mate
- Changing Mate's window manager (from Marco to OpenBox and awesome) : the problem still occurs
- Removing Visual Studio Code, purging it and be sure that every config file is gone, then reinstalling Code : the problem is still there
- Downgrading Firefox and the other packages mentioned above : still there
The problem came from libfreetype6. Copying the version from the stable release of Debian into
/usr/share/codesolved the problem. Source