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Installing Fonts On Linux Made Easy

by | Monday, 10th Aug 2009 | 3 Comments | Share

We all know windows stores it’s fonts in the   c:windowsfonts folder. So to install any font all we do is copy the font file and paste it into the folder. Alternatives include opening the font files and installing them one by one.

Well, Linux also, manages it’s fonts in a similar manner. It uses folders to store fonts. You can see the folders used for storing fonts in your distro, from the file :

/etc/fonts/fonts.conf

So, what we need to do is copy and paste the font into any of the mentioned locations from the file. Common locations include :

/usr/share/fonts,

/usr/local/share/fonts,

/home/<username>/.fonts

where <username> is your username. The last location stores fonts forspecific users. So, you can install your own fonts(for your personal use) here.

To install fonts,

run :

gksu nautilus /usr/share/fonts/truetype

Now, create a new directory there. Put all your fonts in that directory.

Finally, update the font cache with the command :

sudo fc-cache -f -v

Log out and login back to see changes.

This is a very helpful trick as the fonts that come with Linux distros are really poor in quality. Hope they will invest some resources to that in future releases.

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Author:

Chinmoy Kanjilal is a FOSS enthusiast and evangelist. He is passionate about Android. Security exploits turn him on and he loves to tinker with computer networks. He rants occasionally at Techarraz.com. You can connect with him on Twitter @ckandroid.

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  1. lefty.crupps on August 11th, 2009 at 8:30 am #

    In KDE, open a file manager (Dolphin or Konqueror) and browse to
    fonts:/Personal
    or
    fonts:/System
    To install new fonts, just drag-and-drop them into this folder. fonts:/ is one of the many cool KIO Slaves that KDE has, making every KDE application network-friendly (ok, fonts:/ isn’t a network thing, but its still a KIO Slave)

  2. Sourojit on August 14th, 2009 at 7:59 am #

    Good to see my linux in a new look.Thanks for the post.

  3. SIFE on November 30th, 2010 at 1:18 am #

    I don’t know why fc-cache -f -v does show TTF in its verbose:
    /usr/share/fonts: caching, 0 fonts, 5 dirs
    /usr/share/fonts/bitmap-fonts: caching, 31 fonts, 0 dirs
    /usr/share/fonts/bitstream-vera: caching, 10 fonts, 0 dirs
    /usr/share/fonts/default: caching, 0 fonts, 2 dirs
    /usr/share/fonts/default/Type1: caching, 35 fonts, 0 dirs
    /usr/share/fonts/default/ghostscript: caching, 8 fonts, 0 dirs
    /usr/share/fonts/dejavu-lgc: caching, 21 fonts, 0 dirs
    /usr/share/fonts/liberation: caching, 12 fonts, 0 dirs
    /usr/share/X11/fonts/Type1: caching, 29 fonts, 0 dirs
    /usr/share/X11/fonts/OTF: skipping, no such directory
    /root/.fonts: skipping, no such directory
    /var/cache/fontconfig: cleaning cache directory
    /root/.fontconfig: not cleaning unwritable cache directory
    fc-cache: succeeded