If you’ve been brave enough to install or upgrade your ubuntu installation to the latest hardy heron version you may find that the default font configuration is …unsound. Depending on what resources you have available to you there is a very quick and dirty fix for you.

Copy over all "*.ttf" fonts you want available to your installation in to your home "~/.fonts" directory and run "fc-cache -fv ~/.fonts" on them to get your font cache updated.

Note: It is not legal to just do a file search on your windows or os x computers for all .ttf files and copy them over to this same fonts directory – even if it technically does work. This should only be used for fonts that you have legally purchased from Adobe/Apple/Microsoft or have some other copyright legal way of using.


  1. Gravatar IconBrombomb

    If the .fonts folder does not exist (like it didn’t for me) create it with mkdir ~/.fonts

  2. Gravatar IconAhmed

    Hi and thanks, your instructions work wonderfully. I came across this older post, I haven’t tried the instructions there but maybe it gets around the legal note you mentioned.

    http://ubuntu.wordpress.com/2005/09/09/installing-microsoft-fonts/

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