How to install fonts in Ubuntu

Created by marcobra (Marco Braida)
Keywords:
howto install fonts ubuntu ttf
Last updated by:
marcobra (Marco Braida)

You can download and install thousands of free windows .ttf true type fonts from the web and install and use them in Ubuntu (or any other distribution) Linux.

Basically you have two way:

A) system wide fonts
B) user fonts

- A) Install system wide fonts (new fonts will be available for all users of the system)

Just download the fonts you want from free online web sites and archives, if necessary - unzip them to the desktop or another directory of your choice.

Then using terminal create a directory for your new fonts where the fonts are stored on your system.

The /usr/share/fonts is the location in Ubuntu Linux:

So, please open a Terminal from the menu Applications->Accessories->Terminal and type:

sudo mkdir /usr/share/fonts/myfonts

give your user password when requested, you don't see nothing when you type it, then press enter.

Then still using Terminal to install them:

sudo cp /home/user/Desktop/*.ttf /usr/share/fonts/myfonts/

and refresh your font cache like this:

sudo fc-cache -f

- B) Install fonts available to current user only (new fonts will be available only for the current user)

Create a .fonts hidden ( the initial dot into directory name will hide the dir ) directory into your home directory

So, please open a Terminal from the menu Applications->Accessories->Terminal and type:

sudo mkdir $HOME/.fonts

Then just download the fonts you want from free online web sites and archives, if necessary - unzip them to the .fonts directory.

or copy the diffrent path .ttf files to the .font directory into your homedir:

sudo cp /home/user/Desktop/*.ttf $HOME/.fonts/

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Now open OpenOffice Writer or Gimp, and your fonts should be available!
You can access your new true type fonts in any graphics, design, text based document application that uses fonts.

* If you exchange docs with Windows users using OpenOffice please also install some basic Win truetype fonts provided by the msttcorefonts deb package.

First using Synaptic please first enable the universe repository:

Launch Synaptic from menu: System->Administration->Synaptic package manager
From Synaptic menu: Settings->Repositories-> Tab Ubuntu software
enable "Community Maintained open source software (universe)"
Close Synaptic

Then using Terminal simply install package, please type:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts

or on new latest Ubuntu releases:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer

Hope this helps