Linux Fonts

Locations

/usr/share/fonts	location fonts are installed to
/etc/fonts/conf.d/*.conf	systemwide font-aliases
/etc/locale.conf	the character-set used by the system

Font System

Fonts can be accessed in 2x ways:

• rendered by your Xserver directly (/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/*.conf FontPath entries)
• rendered by a font-renderer (fc-cache accessible fonts)

font-manager  # gui program to select fonts

# ============================================
# font-renderer font-cache (non Xserver fonts)
# ============================================
fc-cache  -vfs           # rebuild font-cache
fc-match  "helvetica"    # find fonts containing this string
fc-list | grep iosevka   # list all fonts

# ==================================================
# GUI program to create font-matches
# from your installed X11 fonts (Xserver fonts only)
# ==================================================
xfontsel

# ==============================
# check for a font-match on your
# system (Xserver fonts only)
# ==============================
xlsfonts -fn '-*-helvetica-bold-r-normal-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-1'

Manually Installing Fonts

• Move your font's directory to ``/usr/share/fonts``
• make sure it is readable by all users

font-renderer fonts

# update the fontcache
fc-cache -vfs

X11 fonts

# /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/50-fontpath.conf
Section "Files"
	FontPath "/usr/share/fonts,/usr/share/otherfonts/"      # <- the path MUST end in '/'
EndSection

# restart Xorg server or reboot
xset q                                # all font-paths will be listed
xset +fp  /usr/share/fonts/100dpi/    # add fontpath to beginning of font list

Font Aliases/Overrides

/etc/fonts/conf.d

location for font aliases/overrides

Check which font will answer to a font-family (when used in something like a web browser).

fc-match Helvetica

See Also:

• https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_configuration (see under heading Fontconfig Configuration)

Locale

Your locale determines your character encoding. This is important for example for rendering UTF8-characters.

# /etc/locale.conf
LANG=en_US.UTF-8

References

• http://www.aii-3.com/kb/Enable%20Fonts%20on%20LINUX.pdf