Installing truetype fonts in Fedora Core/Red Hat and others

X Window supports many different types of fonts like Adobe Type 1 fonts, TrueType, or OpenType. If you need your OpenType/TrueType fonts accessible in Linux:

mkdir /usr/share/fonts/opentype

Copy the TrueType (.ttf) or OpenType (.otf) fonts into this folder. Now run
ttmkfdir -d /usr/share/fonts/opentype \
-o /usr/share/fonts/opentype/fonts.scale
mkfontdir /usr/share/fonts/opentype

Run chkfontpath to see if the directory we created (/usr/share/fonts/opentype) is present in the list of locations X Window will look for font files. If not, run:
chkfontpath -a /usr/share/fonts/opentype

If chkfontpath is not present, edit /etc/X11/fs/config or /etc/X11/xfs/config (whichever is present). Locate the lines

catalogue = /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo,
/usr/share/fonts/default/Type1,


To this, add /usr/share/fonts/opentype so that the content now appears like:
catalogue = /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1,
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo,
/usr/share/fonts/default/Type1,
/usr/share/fonts/opentype,


Now run:
fc-cache
fc-list

Check if the fonts added appear in the list. You can also run xfontsel to check the font list. For a font preview as well, run gucharmap.

If you add new fonts to this directory, run ttmkfdir, mkfontdir and fc-cache again.