Installing Fonts on Linux

Using fonts in Linux is similar to other operating systems and can be used in various applications, such as LibreOffice Writer.  The following examples were done on Linux Mint 17.2 'Rafaela'.

Installed fonts can be viewed and installed with a font viewer application similar to the one displayed in Figure 1.

Figure 1 - Font Viewer

There is a package in Debian GNU/Linux based systems, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, etc., named "ttf-mscorefonts-installer", that will install the Microsoft True Type Core Fonts for the Web.  The package can be installed via the command line, or the distributions GUI package manager (Figure 2).

Figure 2 - MS True Type Core Font Installer

During the installation of the ttf-mscorefonts-installer package, the user will be asked to agree to the End User License Agreement (Figure 3).

Figure 3 - True Type core font EULA

After the font installer package is complete the new fonts will appear in the font viewer (Figure 4).

Figure 4 - Newly installed fonts

The new fonts are now available to other applications and can be set to the default, for example, in LibreOffice writer (Figure 5).

Figure 5 - Setting the default font in LibreOffice Writer

The fonts are now set and available (Figure 6).

Figure 6 - Times New Roman in Writer

Installing new True Type Fonts, either purchased or free, can be installed via the Font Viewer by downloading the font (Figure 7).

Figure 7 - Downloaded font

After the font is downloaded and extracted, double clicking the font file will bring it up in the Font Viewer (Figure 8).  The font is installed by clicking on the Install button.

Figure 8 - Installing a font in the Font Viwer

The newly installed font will be located in the users home folder (~/.local/share/fonts/) and are local to the user.  The font is available to the applications, as were the MS True Type Core Fonts (Figure 9).

Figure 9 - Newly installed font available in Writer