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Ubuntu desktop with 12.04 is about to crash. Installed 13.04 on a new machine, want to transfer Book Antiqua font from old machine to the new one. How do I find it on the old machine? My /usr directory is empty.

My fonts.conf file has these lines:

<!-- Font directory list -->
<dir>/usr/share/fonts</dir>
<dir>/usr/x11R6/lib/X11/fonts</dir> 
<dir>/usr/local/share/fonts</dir>
<dir>~/.fonts</dir>

Don't know what this means, but my /usr directory has nothing in it.

4 Answers 4

62

I use fc-list command to view the list of fonts installed.

4
  • Hey, thanks. This was a really helpful one. Also, I guess *-list must be a really helpful command in general. Jul 12, 2017 at 23:09
  • 6
    fc-list | grep "<(partial) name of the font>" maybe handy Feb 21, 2018 at 11:35
  • Very useful for showing font properties as well, e.g. fc-list : family style file spacing, see docs. Properties are listed here.
    – djvg
    Nov 6, 2020 at 13:40
  • @AdamRyczkowski Excellent! Don't forget everyone, this is case sensitive. Been killing myself until this answer.
    – Seek Truth
    Oct 21, 2021 at 18:32
42

Secret Locations:

The secret locations of your fonts whereabouts are defined in /etc/fonts/fonts.conf.

gedit /etc/fonts/fonts.conf

Standard Locations:

/usr/share/fonts
/usr/local/share/fonts
/home/<username>/.fonts #where <username> is your user name

Note that the .fonts folder is a hidden folder.

Source: Where Are Fonts Stored / Located In Ubuntu?

2
  • 12
    Additionally to above: /home/<username>/.local/share/fonts Nov 26, 2015 at 12:12
  • under Ubuntu 20.x that requires root privileges to see, i.e. sudo cat /etc/fonts/fonts.conf
    – Frank N
    Apr 29, 2021 at 10:15
23

I've found that fonts can be installed for Precise (12.04) and Trusty (14.04) in

~/.local/share/fonts
3
  • 2
    Now this is really surprising! This location is definitely not in my /etc/fonts/fonts.conf and even so all fonts I installed using Ubuntu's font viewer ended up there.
    – Chuim
    Feb 16, 2015 at 10:55
  • Not "can", they "are" installed there when using the Font Viewer to install them. I am already spending hours on finding this location to get rid of a font. Pretty dull.
    – mondjunge
    Jun 2, 2015 at 12:18
  • This doesn't actually work on 12.04. Use ~/.fonts instead.
    – Caleb
    Jul 1, 2015 at 5:45
3

To know where are fonts, ask Ubuntu in a terminal:

 whereis fonts

Sample reply:

 fonts: /etc/fonts /usr/share/fonts

The first path has the fonts.conf file which specifies font settings and other locations. The second one is what you are looking for as the default fonts system directory.

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