Installing fonts in Linux (Ubuntu)

This is a guide on how to install fonts in linux.

Like everything in the world there are loads of ways to do anything. In this guide I will attempt to help you the reader to install font in your Ubuntu Installation.

/home/username/.fonts method.

First up in the manual .fonts method.
In the root of your user directory /home/username/, press CTRL+H to view the hidden folders.
Your user directory should be filled with loads of folders starting with a full stop ".",
Look throught the directory and see if you can find a folder called ".fonts", if you don't have one you need to make one.
To make one click on "File" then "Create folder" (or alternativly press "SHIFT+CTRL+N") and name it ".fonts" (the full stop is import as it tells linux that the folder is to be hidden).

Optional Download/fonts folder

This stage is optional but I find it help to keep things organised.
If the folder doesn't exist create a folder called "Downloads" and inside it create a folder called "fonts" but without the full stop.

Downloading and installing fonts

Open up firefox, goto the preferances and change the download location to the folder "Downloads" that you just created.
1001 free fonts and download any ttffont (should get saved to the "downloads" folder or give the option to save it to the fonts folder.
Open up the Download folder and you will find more often then not that the font is in a zip file. Double click the file and Archive tool will open showing the contents of the zip file.
Extract the contents to the fonts folder (why not direct to .fonts? well its personal choice because I copy the ttf file to a backup drive so I don't need to re-extract every time I restore the computer).
Select the .ttf files and hit CTRL+C (or edit>copy) to copy the files to memory, goto /home/username/ and click on the .fonts folder (if not visible press CTRL+H to view the hidden folder), in the folder press CTRL+V or edit>paste to put them into the folder.

Installing fonts for system wide access

The fonts Installed previously should now be available to use by all programs however, they will only be available to the user whose folder they were put in. To make them available to all users, you need to copy them to /usr/share/fonts/truetype/, however fonts in this location are kept in an indevidual folder name e.g.
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/Endore/endore___.ttf.

fonts/// method.

You may have heard of the fonts/// method before. This is essentally the same as the above but doesn't work in Ubuntu 8.10 unless your is admin mode.
To use it open a terminal and type "sudo nautilus" which will start nautilus (gnome file manager) is super user/admin mode.
Press CTRL+L to open an address box and type ".fonts///" which will bring up the .fonts folder.
If adding fonts using this method you may not see them appear immediatly because it has to create the .fonts folder if it didn't exist before.
If nothing appears shut down nautilus and restart it.
This is not an easy way to install fonts and should be ignore in favour of the above method.

Onwards to Part 2

If you would like to contribute or have noticed any errors please contact A Bryant.