Linux Pain: Google Chrome Korean Font Scrunched Up

By Xah Lee. Date: 2013-06-11. Last updated: 2014-09-08.

the pains of linux, episode 97221

google chrome korean font scrunched up 2013-06-11

so, Google Chrome browser suddenly display Korean all scrunched up. After Googling, it seems to be a well-known bug. With my eyeballs, after some 30 min spent spread between days (finally decided to fix), you find the ultimate link for the bug and solution to be this: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=233851

it appears to actually be a bug from the font on linux. Lucky me, i have 2 decades of knowledge of unix, and can fix it. You need to know:

After all checking preparation done, i downloaded the “.deb” package from the link of Google Chrome bug site, and run it, and it doesn't work. Surely because the link on that Google Chrome bug site is outdated.

But i'm a resourceful guy. I know what Debian package means, and my Google Fu is good. So, a trip to the debian package site

http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/main/fonts-wqy-microhei

thinking i'll just download the source. On the page's side there's source download. Turns out, the source isn't it, you need deb package, unless you know how to create package from source. Of course, what a idiot i've been.

so, with my eyeballs, look on the site studiously and you find this proper package download location:

http://packages.ubuntu.com/trusty/all/fonts-wqy-microhei/download

then, download and install, and it doesn't banana work. It's complaining about the previous version can't be removed. (apparently, because this one is beta2, and the one on my system is beta1, and beta2 is actually trying to remove a version that's not beta. some like that)

so, being genius and wizard as i am, i removed the package by hand and run the .deb graphical user interface installer again. Wow, it worked! Linux is the future!