GNU/Linux comes with a bunch of fonts already installed, and there is a much wider selection of True Type fonts available on the Internet. Fortunately for GNU/Linux users, adding True Type fonts to the system is easy. And it can be done in a friendly GUI. If you can point and click, drag and drop, you can install fonts in about 1 minute.
As always there is more than one way to install fonts in GNU/Linux, and KDE has made this really easy to do. I didn't have to hunt down a rpm or deb from the distributions FTP server to do this either, although a few of them now offer Microsoft True Type Core Fonts to download and install using the distributions package manager. If your distribution offers this package in it's software manager use it. For the rest of us a manual font install is the way to go.
"Many web pages and documents require various Microsoft licensed fonts for proper rendering. Microsoft has allowed the redistribution of their most popular fonts as long as their EULA has been kept with them" --Sean Parsons
Many people already rent the windows operating system which includes the licensed fonts, so why not use those, after all you did pay for them.
There are two easy ways to go about this, either mount your windows operating system partition and copy them over to your users account, or better yet burn to CD your windows fonts so they will always be available to you. If you decide to quit dual booting with Microsoft Windows you'll be glad to have them on CD.
The other way is to download the msttcorefonts.tar.gz (3.3MB) from Sean's website and install them from your user account. No matter which way you do this the important part is to have the fonts in your user account ready to install.
I created a new user gym to write this article and I'm using PCLinuxOS as the operating system.
If you don't have a home/user/fonts folder create it first.
Open your file manager then press the F10 key and type in fonts, click on OK.
I also created the pix folder so I could save the screen shots.
Next I used the control+shift+n key combination to open a new tab.
With the new tab open I put... http://thelinuxbox.org/Downloads.php
in the location box, and hit the enter key.
At the Linux box scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page...
Until you get to the font tarball. If you want to read the page, go ahead I'll wait.
Right click, then click, save link as... and click your way to the fonts folder.
Click on the Save button to start the download.
After the download is done, click on the fonts folder tab.
Now that I have the tarball it's time to extract it to get the fonts inside...
Now that I have the tarball, it's time to extract the fonts from the tarball. If you have them burned to CD just drag-n-drop them into your user account fonts folder, and select copy instead of link. For those who downloaded the tarball it's...
Extraction time, right click, then move to extract, click on Extract Here.
Yes the Extract Here part got chopped of during the screen shot.
Now click on the newly created msttcorefonts folder.
Here are all the fonts that I just downloaded, notice the README.htmL that's the EULA for redistributing these fonts.
For now that README.htmL must go because it won't be accepted when installing the fonts. So for safe keeping I put it in the trash.
Obviously... click on the Trash button.
After the fonts are installed I'll put the README.htmL back the the font folder.
Finally it's time to install those fonts.
Click on the Services tab. Then click on Fonts.
Here I have a choice, Personal and System. Because I only have one user I use the Personal folder. This way if something were to go wrong like losing electric during the transfer, I could fix it as the root user. Nothing like losing the fonts and only being able to see a blank black screen. It also makes it easier to delete a ugly font. For those that want to install the fonts globally choose the System folder icon.
It's empty in here, but not for long. The next thing to do is split the window.
On the menu bar click on Window, then click on Split View Left/Right
Now goto your home/user name folder.
I clicked on the X next to the Location: to clear it, then typed in /home/gym/ and pressed the enter key, after that just click your way to the fonts/msttcorefonts folder.
You could also click on the igloo icon on the tab bar on the left to take you to your home folder, your choice.
Use the control+a keyboard combo to hilite all the fonts.
Now click on a font and drag and drop it in the fonts:/Personal folder.
Which brings you to the popup dialog box asking what to do next...
When you let up on the mouse button you are greeted with this dialog box.
Click on Copy Here and wait for the fonts to copy over. While it is copying over the fonts it's also informing the system that you now have extra fonts in your user account. Wait it out, it shouldn't take but only about 10 seconds. Yes it's doing more than just copying over fonts. And there is a dialog box informing you of the progress.
Notice that only 29 out of 30 fonts were accepted, for whatever reason the Webdings.ttf was not copied over. Since I never use these I left it as is. I can't say that I ever seen webdings anywhere so I'll not worry about it.
Close this up properly, and this is also easy to do.
Start by going to the menu bar and click on Window, then click on Close Active View
This will leave only one window active, Click on Location then Quit in the menu bar and the Konqueror file manager will close.
For those interested, the fonts were installed into a newly created .fonts sub folder in your /home/user/ account, they can be viewed by clicking on View then Show Hidden Files.
Click on the .fonts folder to view the newly installed fonts.
Note the Fontmap, fonts.cache-1, fonts.dir and fonts.scale
These four files were created when I copied the fonts over in the Services, Fonts, Personal section. If you decide to delete a font do it there, not here otherwise two of those four files will not get updated to reflect the change you just made. The same goes for installing more fonts. You have been warned!
Congratulations gym, you have just installed true type fonts to your Linux computer.
Depending on the speed of your computer, how much memory you have etc... installing fonts should be done a few at a time as opposed to installing 6700 fonts all at once. Just because there are fonts available on the Internet doesn't mean that they should all be installed on your system.
Installing True Type Fonts
Linear Mode
