For as long as i have used Fedora (first time was F39) the arabic fonts have always been buggy. For example, Plasma and most other applications would use a font that is raised up and taller than the latin/english font (Noto Sans by default), and if there is any arabic in any UI element it would be much larger than usual, here is some screenshots of what it’s like (all taken with the latest live image):
Regular Dolphin with all latin/english letters:
Screenshot-20250528-091132.png
As you can see it looks completley normal.
Now let’s try creating some folders named in arabic:
Screenshot-20250528-093702.png
As you can see it looks off, the top bar is now taller and it’s not aligned with the other english folders.
Application launcher with an english search query:
Screenshot-20250528-093718.png
As you can see it looks completley normal.
Application launcher with some arabic added in the search query:
Screenshot-20250528-093741.png
As you can see it looks off, the search bar is now taller and the text is raised up and it looks terrible.
Now to me, this is unusable. So back then when i first installed Fedora 39 i found that installing DejaVu fonts and setting it as the default font kinda fixed it, arabic fonts now look fine in most applications but i do not like using the DejaVu font as the default font because something about Noto Sans makes them look native to Plasma, maybe because i’ve gotten used to them, so i decided to not use fedora because of this issue, and ever since, with each new version (40, 41 and 42) i boot up the live image and test if this issue has been fixed yet, maybe i should’ve posted a bug report before hand but here i am doing it now.
But after being fed up with KDE Neon, i’ve finally decided to install Fedora 42 and find a fix to this issue, and after hours of searching and trying different things i found a better but not a perfect sollution, and here are the steps:
1- Run “sudo dnf install dejavu-fonts-all” to install DejaVu fonts.
2- Go to the system settings and change the system font to anything then set it back to Noto Sans, you need to this to make KDE create the file “/home/user/.config/fontconfig/fonts.conf”.
3- Then you need to edit that file and set the contents to this:
<?xml version='1.0'?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM 'fonts.dtd'>
<fontconfig>
<match target="pattern">
<test name="family" qual="any">
<string>sans-serif</string>
</test>
<edit binding="same" mode="assign" name="family">
<string>Noto Sans</string>
</edit>
</match>
<dir>~/.fonts</dir>
</fontconfig>
This somehow fixes this issue, I think it’s just setting the english font to Noto Sans and the arabic font will just revert to DejaVu because it’s not specified.
Here are some screenshots with my fix:
Screenshot-20250528-124335.png
Screenshot-20250528-124300.png
I’ve replicated the photos in the live image and as you can see it looks much better!
Now this is almost perfect, but by doing this, you would also make emoji’s/symbols a bit strange, I think this is because they will use DejaVu instead of Noto Sans, and this makes them miss-aligned with the UI, here is a screen shot of the password entry dialog:
Screenshot-20250528-122742.png
It’s very subtle but the password entry “Dots” are slightly lower than usual, this is consistent with all symbols/emoji’s but only if there are no other non-symbol characters in the same line, for example, “
” is going it be miss-aligned but “Meat ” is not, and also it could be arabic or any other language, there just has to be any non symbol/emoji charcher in the same line.
And also there are some applications, like the flatpak version of LibreOffice, the “Save As” dialog uses a terrible unreadable arabic font, screenshot:
Screenshot-20250528-123307.png
I’ts clear that there is something wrong with it, “فيدورا” is written there and it’s illegible, i could not find any other application that uses this font yet.
Now, I do not understand how this has never been mentioned anywhere, atleast i couldn’t find a single person talking about this, especially that fedora is one of the most popular distros in the arabic speaking community, and also the fact that this issue has been there for atleast 1.5 years.
Also i know this isn’t an issue with my computer, for reference here are the specs:
Operating System: Fedora Linux 42
KDE Plasma Version: 6.3.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.14.0
Qt Version: 6.9.0
Kernel Version: 6.14.6-300.fc42.x86_64 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 4 × Intel® Core™ i5-7600K CPU @ 3.80GHz
Memory: 23.4 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon Pro 580X
Manufacturer: Apple Inc.
Product Name: iMac18,3
System Version: 1.0
Because this issue is also there on my laptop which has a Ryzen 3 3200u with a Vega 3 GPU.
Im hoping that his issue will be fixed because i love using fedora so much!