This might turn into a rant, but in all honesty the only thing I am not too pleased about Linux is that not everyone else in the world is using it. Ok, that was enough venting. Lets get to the steak and potatoes of this tutorial!

So, you want your Linux to perform ultimately better than your previous (probably Windows) environment, and at the same time you want to sacrifice as little as possible. Linux seems to have a few “legal” problems with fonts in that aspect, so today were going to go beyond the “legal limits” and get Linux looking how it should. (With that said, most people design websites on Windows XP (or another OS), forget that most of the Linux-world doesn’t have the same fonts as them.

The specific fonts were talking about are: Franklin Gothic, Gautami, Kartika, Lucida Sans Unicode, Latha, Lucida Sans, Mangal, Marlett, Microsoft Sans Serif, MV Boli, Palatino Linotype, Raavi, Shruti, Sylfaen, Symbol, Tahoma, Tunga, and last but not least Wingdings.

Thats a whole lot of fonts us Tux-fans cant get access to.
Well, your wish is my command. I present to you the solution! (Brace yourselves… Its a tutorial!)

What You Will Need

• A Linux PC
  I am running Ubuntu 8.04 here. Just some Linux knowledge to apply the commands to your distribution if your not using the same one as me.
• Fonts Packedwithapunch Pack
  Thats the fonts pack I created with all of these wonderful fonts. Heck, I even gave it a fancy name!

The Steps

Hey, that was easy! Wheres that easy button again? Oh.. here it is!

1. First, go download my Fonts Packedwithapunch Pack. Open up a terminal (ALT+F2) and type “gnome-terminal” or what ever terminal app you use. Xterm? Hey thats a nice one!
2. Type in: “wget http://img.tutorialninjas.net/java-fontspwapp.tar.bz”. (Without quotes) Then hit Enter.
3. Next, type: “tar -xjf java-fontspwapp.tar.bz” Then hit enter.
   PS. I hope your catching on. Don’t type the quotes, only whats inside of them!
4. Make a directory to copy those fonts.
   Type: “sudo mkdir /usr/share/fonts/truetype/pwap”
5. Now copy the fonts to your usr/share!
   Type: “sudo cp -v java-fontspwapp/* /usr/share/fonts/truetype/pwap/”
6. Now that the fonts are copied, lets refresh the font caches!
   Type: “sudo fc-cache -f -v”
7. Once it finishes, your all done! I would reccomend for your own good to do a quick X restart. Do this by holding CTRL + ALT + BACKSPACE. Now your good to go!

Other Information

Ok ok ok, I know that smart-guy is going to come here and post: “Hey, there is a total easier way to install Windows fonts on Linux. Ok, before you say that– read the fonts I listed above and then think about saying that again. Raavi was not a font distributed under GPL- OK?!”

By the way, this tutorial is for Educational purposes only.

Comments? Questions? Anything else you want to say about this post? Let us know in the comments below.
…Hey that rhymed! Pretty flippin sweet for a ninja if you ask me!

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 26th, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under Technology.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.