Microsoft’s Truetype fonts are popular fonts such as Arial, Cosmic Sans, Georgia, Times Roman, Verdana, and others most used in documents and various organizations. We often receive documents containing these fonts and also spot them on multiple web pages.
As far as Linux-based operating systems are concerned, they barely include these fonts by default. Because they are developed by Microsoft and redistribution of TTF files of these fonts is not allowed, major Linux distributions don’t have them by default. As a result, the Core Fonts (Arial, Times Roman, Verdana, etc.) by Microsoft look different in Linux operating systems when you open them with programs such as LibreOffice.
The reason is, the fonts are replaced with Libertarian fonts — open-source fonts — which results in an impact on the visual appearance of the fonts. This is where the Debian ttf mscorefonts installer comes in handy. In this tutorial, you will get to know about ttf-mscorefonts-installer and how to use it in Linux.
What is ttf-mscorefonts-installer?
ttf-mscorefonts-installer is a Debian package that includes the following set of fonts, and with the help of this installer, you can easily download and use Microsoft’s True core fonts.
- Andale Mono
- Arial Black
- Arial (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
- Comic Sans MS (Bold)
- Courier New (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
- Georgia (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
- Impact
- Times New Roman (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
- Trebuchet (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
- Verdana (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
- Webdings
How to Use ttf Mscorefonts Installer for Different Fonts
To use these fonts, you need to install them first using the ttf mscorefonts installer. Once these fonts are installed on your system, your operating system will support the fonts in the above-mentioned list.
First, go to the command line terminal and execute the following command:
Enter the password and wait for the package to download. Once the download is complete, you have to accept the EULA license terms.
Click Yes to accept the End-User License Agreement. In case you mistakenly didn’t accept the EULA and then run the following command:
Finally, execute the following command that will build a new font information cache file on the system.
Now, check if the fonts are installed on your Linux desktop by executing the following command. It will list down all installed on the system.
This will install Microsoft TrueType core fonts on the system.
Common ttf mscorefonts Installer Error
When installing mscorefonts, users also have reported a few errors leading ttf mscorefonts installer failed to download.
Error: 404 not found, Download Fails
Reason: The download process of the proprietary Microsoft fonts goes through the ttf-mscorefonts-installer to apt-helper. In other words, when installing Microsoft fonts on Linux, ttf-mscorefonts-installer assigns the download task update-notifier, which itself delegates this process to a program “apt-helper.”
Due to apt-helper having a long-standing bug, the space between the URL is not encoded, resulting in a redirection error.
Solution: Since this bug has not been resolved yet, manual download of the fonts is the best solution. We will use the wget command to download the fonts and put all files in one folder.
Now, we will initiate the installation by running the following command;
Error: Failure to Download Extra Data Files
This problem occurs when your package contains invalid download links, resulting in download failure.
Solution: Check if you are downloading the latest version of the package. Though this error existed in previous versions, later, they fixed it in the Debian version of ttf-mscorefonts-installer.
However, you can do the same through the command line. Ensure you have enabled the update repository, which you can do by executing the following command on the command line. Execute the following command to your system to update all packages:
This command is used to repair inconsistent packages:
If this doesn’t work, it’s better to download the package directly from the above-given link.
Final words
We hope you have found this article helpful and successfully installed Microsoft’s core fonts on your Linux desktop. In case you like this tutorial, then make sure to visit our website as we have uploaded various tutorials. If you have any queries or suggestions, then please let us know in the comment section.
