I upgraded from dapper to edgy a while ago. elixxir's workaround didn't work here, apparently the helvetica font is broken: when I run xfontsel and select helvetica (or any other adobe font), the preview area of the xfontsel window is not drawn at all (the previously selected font or parts of overlapping windows remain).
However, using the following ~/.gtkrc.mine works for me: style "user-font" { fontset="-bitstream-bitstream vera sans-medium-r-normal-*-12-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-15" } widget_class "*" style "user-font" -- Fonts not shown in dialogs window https://launchpad.net/bugs/65708 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs