There are many questions and answers regarding fonts on Ubuntu, but not so many dealing with Ubuntu for Embedded Linux, such as Beaglebone Black.
I have not been able to locate any .ttf files in standard locations on my system, and I think that given the resource constraints these have been omitted.
Using the command line, how can I (1) find out which fonts are installed, and (2) install more fonts.
FYI: I am looking for a simple sans-serif ttf that I can use to display text on an 8x8 LED matrix.
34 Answers
The best and simplest way is to use console command (this command should be available for all ubuntu-based distributions) :
fc-list
Example output (stripped) :
/usr/share/fonts/truetype/lato/Lato-Medium.ttf: Lato,Lato Medium:style=Medium,Regular /usr/share/fonts/truetype/tlwg/TlwgTypo-Bold.ttf: Tlwg Typo:style=Bold /usr/share/fonts/truetype/lato/Lato-SemiboldItalic.ttf: Lato,Lato Semibold:style=Semibold Italic,Italic /usr/share/fonts/truetype/dejavu/DejaVuSerif-Bold.ttf: DejaVu Serif:style=Bold /usr/share/fonts/truetype/noto/NotoSansThai-Regular.ttf: Noto Sans Thai:style=Regular ... From MAN :
fc-list - list available fonts To check all available options use MAN (manual): man fc-list
if you need to get the font family name:
fc-list : family | sort | uniq
What version of Ubuntu are you using?
(1) Thanks to the links from Lety, on my ubuntu 15.04 machine less /etc/fonts/fonts.conf. In there it describes how to use local.conf.
(2) from a command line, to search for more fonts I use apt-cache search font | grep lcd then I use apt-cache show {} (replacing {} with the package name) for a more detailed description. installation from the command line has several variants (like aptitude) but good old sudo apt-get install {} works well.
Answer for 2nd question:
Installing font is just copying its file to some folder. There can be many folders. At my system they are:
/usr/share/fonts/— fonts for all users~/.local/share/fonts/- fonts for particular user
There can be any subfolders you want.
Here is the command to get list of font files that your system uses.
fc-list -f '%{file}\n' | sort Look at it and you'll get the idea of where fonts in your system located/
