Objective
The following article will explain how to install fonts on Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver LinuxOperating System and Software Versions
- Operating System: - Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver
Requirements
Privileged access to your Ubuntu System as root or viasudo command is required.
Conventions
- # - requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of
sudocommand - $ - requires given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user
Other Versions of this Tutorial
Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa)Instructions
This article will useBitwise.ttf as a sample TrueType Font to be installed on Ubuntu 18.04 Desktop. This font and many other fonts can be freely downloaded from the https://www.1001freefonts.com/ website.
Alternatively, you can use the bellow
wget and unzip commands to download and store Bitwise.ttf into your Downloads directory:
$ wget -O ~/Downloads/bitwise.zip https://www.1001freefonts.com/d/8190/bitwise.zip $ unzip -p ~/Downloads/bitwise.zip Bitwise.ttf > ~/Downloads/Bitwise.ttf $ rm ~/Downloads/bitwise.zipThe
Bitwise.ttf font should now be stored in your Downloads directory:
$ ls ~/Downloads/ Bitwise.ttf $ file ~/Downloads/Bitwise.ttf /home/linuxconfig/Downloads/Bitwise.ttf: TrueType Font data, 10 tables, 1st "OS/2", 18 names, Macintosh, type 1 string, BitwiseRegular
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Install Fonts using Font Manager
The first and recommended approach to installing fonts on Ubuntu 18.04 Bionic Beaver is by use of Font Manager. Let's start by the Font Manager installation in case Font Manager is not already installed on your system.Open up terminal and enter:
$ sudo apt update && sudo apt -y install font-managerOnce the installation of Font Manager is completed, start the font manager by searching the Start/Activities menu:
Search for the
font keyword then click on Font Manager icon to start Font Manager.
Once in the Font Manager window click on
+ sign in order to install a new font.
Navigate to the directory containing the desired font you wish to install. Once selected, hit the
Open button.
Your font should be now installed. Use the search box to locate your newly installed font by searching for its name.
Optionally, confirm the font installation by using any font selection capable application like for example LibreOffice - Writer.
~/.local/share/fonts/ user home directory. This means that the fonts will be accessible only to the user who actually performed the fonts installation. Read the below section
Manual system-wide font installation on how to perform the system-wide font installation.
Manual user-space font installation
It is also possible to install new fonts manually by storing any new fonts into the~/.fonts directory located within the user home directory. The font installation procedure is quite simple as all what needs to be done in order to install new fonts is to copy the actual font file into
~/.fonts:
$ mkdir ~/.fonts $ cp ~/Downloads/Bitwise.ttf ~/.fontsAll done. If you need to sort your new installed fonts into a sub-directory feel free to do so. Any directory under
~/.fonts will be included recursively and fonts picked up by the system.
Manual system-wide font installation
To install fonts system-wide, thus to be available for any user on the system, simply use thecp command to copy the desired font file into the /usr/local/share/fonts directory or create a new directory with /usr/local/share/fonts if you wish to sort your installed fonts into a sub-directory. The following linux command will install a new font file
~/Downloads/Bitwise.ttf into a new directory eg. /usr/local/share/fonts/sample:
$ sudo mkdir /usr/local/share/fonts/sample $ sudo cp ~/Downloads/Bitwise.ttf /usr/local/share/fonts/sample/All done. No further configuration is required.
