the file /etc/fonts/font.conf has an improper '--' in line 17. Someone should delete at least one of the dashes and update the ebuild. This has diverse effects on many programs, for example, kdm taking about a min to start up, and others like alsamixergui failing to start.
Created attachment 5041 [details] My fonts.conf file to show a correct example.
You need to set your timezone. # zic -l Africa/Johannesburg And then remerge fontconfig. fonts.conf is generated at compile time .... *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 9473 ***
*** Bug 9768 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
You know what, the ebuild ended up using my technique almost, but my time zone got unset apparently when I did a system recovery. Here's a hint don't emerge glibc-2.3.1, emerge -e system, unmerge glibc-2.3.1 Yeah, I know I am an idiot, but I was having troubles with some packages and 2.3
Closing old bugs.