First of all, I am using the Knoppix 5.0.1 live DVD at work when I work on the company's website, due to the software I primarily use (GIMP, Inkscape, etc.) not running reliably on my Windows 98 box. I have noticed that certain apps under KDE control the size of their fonts based on the monitor's DPI as reported by the X server. Unfortunately, if the DPI is not set correctly, this can lead to fonts being too large or too small. In my case, they're too small--almost unreadable. The application in my case is Mozilla Firefox. I have tried the many suggestions I have found all over the web for manually setting the monitor's DPI, but to no avail. It seems as though all of my manual configuration attempts are ignored by KDE, and my settings are stuck at 75 DPI, whereas my monitor should be at 96 DPI. I have tried:
  • added DisplaySize xxx xxx to xorg.conf under the Monitor section
    added Option "UseEdidDpi" "False" under the Device section
    added ServerArgsLocal=-dpi 96 -nolisten tcp to /etc/kde3/kdm/kdmrc

I found the following web page particularly informative during my attempted customizations: http://www.mozilla.org/unix/dpi.html

Does anybody know how this can be done? The small fonts drive me nuts! I would rather not force Mozilla font sizes with .css files as some have done, since I don't believe that is the solution to the real problem, only a coverup. I have also read that some people with NVIDIA graphics cards have solved the problem by switching from the open source nv driver to NVIDIA's driver, but I don't see how this would be possible running from the live DVD. Since Gnome defaults to 96 DPI, I am currently running Knoppix with that desktop mode. In Gnome, the fonts are just the right size, but things aren't set up very well compared to the KDE profile (as is to be expected since Knoppix was designed to be run under KDE).

Thanks for your time,
-~Chris