Installing TTF Fonts In Linux

Linux as a general rule doent have many true type fonts available pre installed either due to license restrictions or just because some think thats a windows thing ewwwww.

Fact of the matter its nice to have more options especially when you design or use graphical tools a lot.

First obtain the fonts you want. There are many sites out there for free fonts but some of the ones I go back to time and time again are:

1001 Free Fonts
GRSites

METHOD 1 - Using local font folder

Once you have the ttf file that you want go into a terminal / console window

type ls ~/.fonts

If that comes up with a result showing no such file or directory we will need to create it with the command

mkdir ~/.fonts

Now go into the folder where your ttf files are located and copy them to the fonts folder by typing the command(s)

mv *.ttf ~/.fonts/
mv *.TTF ~/.fonts/

Some files may be lowercase some may be upper case the above two commands takes care of both of them

Now to finally be able to access them in a program you can reboot to refresh the font system or if you have access to the root password type in

sudo fc-cache -fv

You should now have access to them in abiword, gimp and all other programs
 

METHOD 2 - Using system wide font folder

copy font files to either /usr/share/fonts OR /usr/share/fonts/truetype. You need root privledges to do this. From a console enter sudo nautilus, this will allow you to graphically browse your system with root privledges..makes things a little easier.

then update your font cache.

sudo fc-cache -fv

Alternatively, if you want to keep the fonts in some place other than your home folder or system wide font folders you can keep the fonts where they are and simply link to them.