KDE4 System-wide Force Font DPI Setting

Recently, while setting up a Kubuntu Linux terminal server using freenx, I’ve got an issue with the font display being too small. A quick check in Font settings (Applications -> Settings -> System Settings -> Fonts) showed that the “Force fonts DPI” was set to Disabled.

To correct this per user, it’s as easy as to select the 96 DPI from the drop down menu, logout and log back in. However, if we want to apply this setting to all users, there’s a bit of more work.

Create a file /usr/share/kubuntu-default-settings/kde4-profile/default/share/config/kcmfonts. Then add the following content:

[General]
dontChangeAASettings=true
forceFontDPI=96`

If you’ve previously logged on before, you might want to delete this file $HOME/.kde/share/config/startupconfig so that it can be generated again.