Fedora 39 pre-release / Text disappears
Issue
Running Fedora Linux 39 Workstation Edition Prerelease
Standard Gnome setup
In place upgrade.
After an update - text disappeared from chromium.
It also disappeared from Chrome based applications - such as Joplin, Ferdium, and Slack.
Chrome itself was untouched. Chromium, however, unseable.
Diagnosis
Moving to version 23.2.1-2.fc39 from updates-testing results in text disappearing.
mesa-dri-drivers x86_64 23.2.1-2.fc39 updates-testing 25 M
mesa-filesystem x86_64 23.2.1-2.fc39 updates-testing 18 k
mesa-libEGL x86_64 23.2.1-2.fc39 updates-testing 132 k
mesa-libEGL-devel x86_64 23.2.1-2.fc39 updates-testing 21 k
mesa-libGL x86_64 23.2.1-2.fc39 updates-testing 174 k
mesa-libOSMesa x86_64 23.2.1-2.fc39 updates-testing 3.2 M
mesa-libgbm x86_64 23.2.1-2.fc39 updates-testing 45 k
mesa-libglapi x86_64 23.2.1-2.fc39 updates-testing 52 k
mesa-libxatracker x86_64 23.2.1-2.fc39 updates-testing 2.7 M
mesa-va-drivers x86_64 23.2.1-2.fc39 updates-testing 3.9 M
mesa-vulkan-drivers x86_64 23.2.1-2.fc39 updates-testing 12 M
Resolution
The issue came to pass after upgrading the mesa libraries.
Downgrading these libraries resolves the issue.
dnf downgrade mesa-*
After rolling the mesa packages back the text returned when the application was restarted / started afresh.
I am now waiting on a newer version than 23.2.1*2.fc39 before upgrading.
REMEMBER: to make use of exclude until this is resolved. For example:
dnf update --exclude mesa*
UPDATE Mon 16th October 2023
This issue is down to hardware acceleration.
Some idiot (me) fat fingered an update and resulted in new versions of mesa with no means to downgrade (apparently).
The resolution took two forms to anything running as an electron application.... either remove the GPU Cache directory - for example:
rm -fvr ~/.config/Ferdium/GPUCache
... or by editing the config files to ensure they did not come up next time with that running - the example above being a dead loss your friend is with:
vim ~/.config/Ferdium/config/settings.json
... and ediing the GPU setting from true to false.
Rinse and repeat until you have what you need running, and wait for the renderer to be fixed : /
While an unwelcome addition to my day - hopefully sharing the solution will assist.
TL;DR First defence, dont be there, second, remove folder, third, edit config.