![](\"\/images\/mathematica\/font_bug.png\")
<\/p>\nI recently upgraded my Ubuntu installation from 7.10 to 8.04 and almost immediately ran into problems when trying to run Mathematica 6.0.2 – all of the fonts are not rendering properly. In addition, if I run mathematica from a console window I get error messages like<\/p>\n
X Error of failed request: RenderBadPicture (invalid Picture parameter)
\nMajor opcode of failed request: 158 (RENDER)
\nMinor opcode of failed request: 7 (RenderFreePicture)
\nPicture id in failed request: 0x440189f
\nSerial number of failed request: 69419
\nCurrent serial number in output stream: 69420<\/p>\n
X Error of failed request: BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)
\nMajor opcode of failed request: 158 (RENDER)
\nMinor opcode of failed request: 4 (RenderCreatePicture)
\nSerial number of failed request: 71071
\nCurrent serial number in output stream: 71074<\/p>\n
The following screenshot shows the problem – you cannot see anything you type apart from a few symbols such as [] and {} .<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Other people have come across this problem and workarounds have been identified. The first is to run Mathematica from a console prompt as follows<\/p>\n
mathematica -defaultvisual<\/strong><\/p>\n This allows you to see what you are doing but is a big ugly. Another workaround is to install libqt4-core and libqt4-gui by doing<\/p>\n sudo apt-get install libqt4-core libqt4-gui<\/strong><\/p>\n and then rename a couple of files in the Mathematica distribution as follows<\/p>\n sudo mv \/usr\/local\/Wolfram\/Mathematica\/6.0\/SystemFiles\/Libraries\/Linux\/libQtCore.so.4 \/usr\/local\/Wolfram\/Mathematica\/6.0\/SystemFiles\/Libraries\/Linux\/libQtCore.so.4.old<\/strong><\/p>\n sudo mv \/usr\/local\/Wolfram\/Mathematica\/6.0\/SystemFiles\/Libraries\/Linux\/libQtGui.so.4 \/usr\/local\/Wolfram\/Mathematica\/6.0\/SystemFiles\/Libraries\/Linux\/libQtGui.so.4.old<\/strong><\/p>\n This fixes the problem but you may get two extra blank windows appear when you run Mathematica. To fix this open up the Option Inspector in Mathematica as follows:<\/p>\n Edit<\/strong>-> Preferences<\/strong> and click on Open Option Inspector<\/strong><\/p>\n When in the Option Inspector click on Notebook Options <\/strong>and then Window Properties<\/strong> and change the WindowFrame<\/strong> option from “Normal” to “Generic” then click on Apply<\/p>\n A big thank you to the people in this thread<\/a> on launchpad.net for developing all of these workarounds. I will be reporting these problems to Wolfram’s tech support as soon as I have finished writing this.<\/p>\n![](\"\/images\/mathematica\/nullwinfix.png\")
<\/p>\n