Live Chat!
Installing true type fonts for linux
May 4th, 2008 mysurface Posted in Misc | Hits: 27621 |
While searching the ways of installing true type fonts to linux, I get all sort of solutions. Some will ask you to copy and paste to fonts:/// folders in nautilus, or fonts:/ in konqueror. Some may even ask you to copy your ttf fonts to /usr/share/fonts and run fc-cache. All sort of ways doesn’t works so well during last two years.
Nowadays, I think all sort of ways may works under particular linux distro, the steps to install font might vary between different linux distros, but its they a common way that it will works for any distro? For me, installing custom fonts should be as straight forward as ‘copy and paste’ ttf files to a specific folders without needing to run any command or configuration script.
Recently, I find the ‘copy and paste’ way. I just need to copy my downloaded ttf font files to ~/.fonts. If your home directory does not contain .fonts folder, create a new one
For examples, I download a font from a site, it consist of multiple ttf files.
Readme.txt
SF New Republic Bold Italic.ttf
SF New Republic Bold.ttf
SF New Republic Italic.ttf
SF New Republic Sample.jpg
SF New Republic SC Bold Italic.ttf
SF New Republic SC Bold.ttf
SF New Republic SC Italic.ttf
SF New Republic SC.ttf
SF New Republic.ttf
I create a new folder “SF New Republic” in ~/.fonts , and copy all these files into that folder. Next I open oowriter ( open office writer), straight away I can use the font without doing fc-cache or any configurations.
Anyway, there is a command to verify fonts have successfully installed to your system:
fc-list | grep "SF"SF New Republic:style=Regular
SF New Republic:style=Bold
SF New Republic:style=Bold Italic
SF New Republic SC:style=Bold
SF New Republic SC:style=Italic
SF New Republic SC:style=Regular
SF New Republic SC:style=Bold Italic
SF New Republic:style=Italic
fc-list is actually listing all the installed fonts, with pipe over grep, we can verified whether are those fonts successfully installed.
I have tested this method on:
1. Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04
2. Fedora 8
I would like to do a survey at here, if you are running different distro listed above, can you try out this method?
p.s. You can download fonts at http://www.dafont.com
May 4th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
Nice tips. I have been following your blog for some time now and I am very impressed with the quality. Keep the good work :)
Srikanth
May 5th, 2008 at 12:46 am
I just tried it, made the folder and moved the ttf files into that folder, worked like a charm. thanks, that was too easy!
May 5th, 2008 at 12:57 am
@Srikanth, thanks.
May 5th, 2008 at 12:58 am
@cliff: if you read this comment, would you mind tell us what linux distro are you using? Thanks.
May 5th, 2008 at 1:07 am
It works in Ubuntu Dapper Drake 6.06 LTS using the gnome desktop.
May 22nd, 2008 at 10:49 pm
made the ~/.fonts folder, works great in Ubuntu 8.04 LTS using gnome, gimp, and oowriter. Thanks for the great tip.
June 22nd, 2008 at 3:27 pm
this way works for only one user, doesn’t?
so if there are more users all of them should do it.
i think there must be a way which is good for all users.
:)
July 16th, 2008 at 7:03 pm
great! works painlessly. Keep up the good work.