No repro for me on Ubuntu. If you run 'fc-match -s Arial' in a terminal what output does it give?
I threw the good and bad versions in a gist: https://gist.github.com/aaronp24/6194793
Diff from good to bad: https://gist.github.com/aaronp24/6194793/revisions
It's definitely choosing new fonts with the new packages installed, which is not what I see on my machine. I'm not sure what's different about your configuration that it'd want to pick the xfonts. The bad rendering is possibly a problem in FreeType, then, as Steam relies on FreeType to get font images. We'll have to try and repro here to see if we can identify the issue.
I have this issue too. I run ArchLinux, proprietary nvidia drivers, GeForce 8600 GT. For me, it also tells me that graphics are not accelerated before showing the window with the garbled text.
I know this is quite old but I'll post for reference in case anyone else experiences this on arch linux. Install ttf-liberation and everything should be fine. This is per the arch linux wiki at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/steam.
Confirmed both this bug and the fix from @mpadilla2 on Ubuntu 14.10.
Same. Liberation fixed
Nothing extracted yet.
I'm using Arch Linux. When the xorg-fonts-100dpi and xorg-fonts-75dpi packages are installed (which they are if you install the entire "xorg" group), then the Steam initial dialog looks like this:
![steam-bad]()
![steam-good]()
Exiting the Steam client, running "pacman -R xorg-fonts-100dpi xorg-fonts-75dpi", and restarting the client makes it appear correctly:
Reproduces on both Intel and NVIDIA.