After 15.10 to 16.04 update some characters became unreadable

After 15.10 to 16.04 upgrade some fonts/characters (Chinese, Japanese and Korean) in Chrome and Chromium became so thin that they are almost impossible to read. Some random search result from Google looks like this:

In terminal it says Fontconfig error: Cannot load default config file few times. What the problem can be?

Solution 1:

For some reason Chrome keeps defaulting to Noto Sans CJK Thin. Simplest solution is to replace the NotoSans font bundled with Ubuntu with just the regular weight.

Idea sparked by noto-sans-cjk-thin-font-issue

In short:

• download https://noto-website-2.storage.googleapis.com/pkgs/NotoSansCJK-Regular.ttc.zip
• chmod 644 on the downloaded font
• replace /usr/share/fonts/opentype/noto/NotoSansCJK.ttc with the downloaded version

Benefit: no thin browser font rendering.

Drawback: no font weights other than regular!

Solution 2:

I use another work-around: in chromium settings -> customize fonts, change "standard font" to use "Noto Sans CJK", like me use "Noto Sans CJK SC";