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How To Add Fonts In Fedora Linux

Install fonts in Fedora

By sk
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The stock fonts in your Linux desktop may not look good or satisfy your requirements. You might want to install new fonts in your Linux distribution. In this brief guide, let me show you how to add fonts in Fedora Linux system.

1. Introduction

In general, fonts play an important role in designing. They add value to your text. It helps the readers to perceive information from the text.

Whether you’re designing a website, a presentation or simply you'd like to caption an image, choosing the right font is the key to effective communication!

Most Linux distributions ships with several fonts by default. If they don't suit for your taste, you can add new fonts to your Linux distribution as described in the following steps.

2. Add fonts in Fedora Linux

We can add fonts in Fedora and other Linux distributions in two ways.

2.1. Install packaged fonts

Fedora dev team has packaged several freely-licensed fonts. So you can install them using the dnf package manager.

To list all available packaged fonts from the enabled repositories, run:

$ sudo dnf search fonts

This will list all available from the official repositories.

Search fonts in Fedora Linux
Search fonts in Fedora Linux

You can also narrow down the specific type of font using grep command:

$ sudo dnf search fonts | grep tamil

This will display Tamil language related fonts.

If font is already packaged and you know name of the font, you can directly add it using the dnf package manager.

For instance, to install bitmap fonts, you would run:

$ sudo dnf install bitmap-console-fonts

Heads Up: Installing packaged font is always recommended. You will receive regular updates and customization when a new version of the installed font is available.

2.2. Install unpackaged fonts (install fonts manually)

Some fonts may not be packaged due to licensing or other reasons. In such cases, you can manually download the fonts and copy them to the fonts directory in Linux.

You can install fonts system-wide or per-user basis.

If you prefer to install fonts to all users i.e. system-wide, copy the font files to /usr/share/fonts/ or /usr/local/share/fonts/ directory.

If you want to install fonts for individual user only, copy the fonts to ~/.local/share/fonts/ directory. If the fonts directory is not exists, simply create it.

You may want to install more than one font sometimes. Instead of keeping all fonts in a single directory, it is a good practice to keep them in separate directory.

For example, I am going to install Firacode and Opendyslexic fonts. So, I created the following two directories for each font type:

$ mkdir -p ~/.local/share/fonts/firacode
$ mkdir -p ~/.local/share/fonts/opendyslexic

If you want to install fonts for all users, then create the necessary directories like below:

$ sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/fonts/firacode
$ sudo mkdir -p /usr/share/fonts/opendyslexic

Now, go to the directory where you downloaded the fonts and copy them to the fonts directory as shown below.

Per-user font installation:

$ sudo cp ~/Downloads/firacode.ttf ~/.local/share/fonts/firacode
Add fonts in Fedora Linux
Add fonts in Fedora Linux

Similarly, add other fonts:

$ sudo cp ~/Downloads/opendyslexic.ttf ~/.local/share/fonts/opendyslexic

System-wide font installation:

$ sudo cp ~/Downloads/firacode.ttf /usr/share/fonts/firacode
$ sudo cp ~/Downloads/opendyslexic.ttf /usr/share/fonts/opendyslexic

Heads Up: Since unpackaged fonts are not installed by the package manager, you will not receive automatic updates. So it is always recommend to install packaged fonts to get regular updates and optimizations.

2.3. Update font cache

Once all the fonts are copied or installed, run the fc-cache command to build font information cache files for applications using fontconfig for their font handling:

$ fc-cache -fv
Update font cache
Update font cache

If you have added the fonts to system-wide (i.e. /usr/share/fonts/ or /usr/local/share/fonts/ location), run the fc-cache command with sudo or root privilege:

$ sudo fc-cache -fv

Conclusion

As you can see, installing fonts in Fedora Linux is not a big deal. Even though this guide is specifically written for Fedora, you can follow the same instructions to add fonts in almost all Linux distributions.

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