Ubuntu – Blender Distorted UI

blenderdriversgraphicsxubuntu

I have just downloaded the latest version of Blender from the website on to my Xubuntu machine, when I open it, I get this:

The screenshot below is a zoomed in version of the top left of the screen, as you can see, the (i) icon is displayed fine but the text is unreadable.

screenshot

Images appear fine but the text is very distorted. What other information should I provide that may help to solve this problem?
Thanks in advance, ell.

Edit: I downloaded the Linux x86-32 package from the blender website(pre-compiled binaries) and extracted it, I've tried running plain blender (just open the blender executable) as well as running the blender-softwaregl script but both give the same results. Both of them give the following results when run from the terminal:

ndof: dead zone set to 0.10
connect failed: No such file or directory
ndof: spacenavd not found
Info: Config directory with "startup.blend" file not found.
found bundled python: /home/elliot/Downloads/blender-2.59-linux-glibc27-i686/2.59/python

Best Answer

The question mentioned that blender was installed from the website - I presume this means that it was compiled. It could be a compilation/incompatibility through this method of installation.

Installing from this PPA into my Xubuntu virtual guest displayed blender v2.59.2 correctly:

enter image description here

installation

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:cheleb/blender-svn
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install blender

Graphics Issues

With older graphics cards you do have a couple of options to try:

Uplift your graphics stack using the x-swat PPA
Uplift both your graphics stack and kernel using the x-edgers PPA

Both obviously are less tested and can themselves break your system - so have a good backup BEFORE you attempt them. Using something like clonezilla to backup your system to and external hard-drive.

For suggestion 1:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

For suggestion 2: this is an unstable PPA - whilst it can resolve graphical issues - accepting updates from the PPA can leave you with black-screen

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa 
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-3.0.0-11 linux-image-3.0.0-11-generic

Then open software-sources and untick the edgers PPA so that further updates are not received in the future.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Blender won’t save images

You have to manually save renders.

First you start with a scene you want to render.
After setting up your image settings, hit f12 to Render.
Now you will get a rendered image in your viewport (under the UV/Image editor).
However, this image is not saved automatically.
To save it, you need to click on the image menu:
And you will get the option to save the image:

Ubuntu – Can not properly install blender

Blender is available in the Ubuntu Software Center. It will solve your problem if you install Blender using the Ubuntu Software Center. Alternatively you can also install Blender from the terminal by running the command: sudo apt-get install blender.

In order to install the recommended proprietary driver for your NVIDIA GeForce GT 640 graphics card, search in the Dash for Additional Drivers. Click on the Additional Drivers icon to open Additional Drivers. From the list of Nvidia drivers, select the driver that has [Recommended] after it. That's the graphics card driver that will give you the best performance. Click the Apply Changes button in the lower right corner to install the recommended Nvidia graphics card driver. Reboot to enable the Nvidia graphics card driver.

Here's how to enable CUDA with an NVIDIA graphics card. In Ubuntu 14.04 you need to install the nvidia-331 graphics driver or more recent in order to enable CUDA. You also need to install the NVIDIA CUDA runtime library. The Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) enables NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs) to be used for massively parallel general purpose computation. Remove the existing proprietary NVIDIA driver and then open the terminal and type:

sudo apt-get install nvidia-331 libcudart5.5

Update: The updated above command for Ubuntu 16.04 is:

sudo apt install nvidia-375 libcudart7.5

Then open Blender and select File -> User Preferences and it will open a Blender User Preferences window. As you can see in the screenshot CUDA is enabled in Blender in Ubuntu 14.04 with an NVIDIA graphics card that is similar to yours.