Fonts

Fonts on Alpine Linux covers a wide range of fonts for various languages. If you can't see your language, you need to install the font that has glyphs (little picture) created for it.

Installation

Example how to install the font:

apk add terminus-font

fc-cache -fv can be used to display the font locations and to update the cache. The system font directory is located at /usr/share/fonts which is reserved for the Alpine package creators and the package system. The user font location is located in ~/.font which is the preferred install font location especially from unknown sources. Fonts have been used as a source of security vulnerabilities (See CVEs) so to reduce the spread of attack install fonts inside ~/.font. The trusted system fonts that Alpine LInux packages typically are from well known sources like corporations like Google, Adobe, open organizations like XOrg or well known font designers or projects licensed as either SIL, GPL, etc.

Configuration

Some applications do not specify a specific font to use but rather say sans-serif [sans means without as in without tiny lines], serif, monospace [as in proportional square font]. This is where Fontconfig comes into place by substituting the general font type with a specific font that you like. For package developers, /etc/fonts/conf.avail contains a fontconfig configuration file. This will be symlinked into /etc/fonts/conf.d. See /etc/fonts/conf.d/README for details about the meaning behind the priority numbers.

For regular users, you want to create/edit your personal ~/.fonts.conf. This is in XML and describes which preferred font to use for these general types. See this for details.

List of fonts in Alpine Linux

• Utopia font-adobe-utopia-*
• Noto font-noto-* (These fonts can cover different glyphs for your langage)

font-noto
font-noto-adlam
font-noto-adlamunjoined
font-noto-arabic
font-noto-armenian
font-noto-avestan
font-noto-bamum
font-noto-bengali
font-noto-buhid
font-noto-carian
font-noto-chakma
font-noto-cherokee
font-noto-cypriot
font-noto-deseret
font-noto-devanagari
font-noto-emoji
font-noto-ethiopic
font-noto-extra
font-noto-georgian
font-noto-glagolitic
font-noto-gothic
font-noto-gujarati
font-noto-gurmukhi
font-noto-hebrew
font-noto-kannada
font-noto-kayahli
font-noto-khmer
font-noto-lao
font-noto-lisu
font-noto-malayalam
font-noto-mandaic
font-noto-myanmar
font-noto-nko
font-noto-olchiki
font-noto-oldturkic
font-noto-oriya
font-noto-osage
font-noto-osmanya
font-noto-shavian
font-noto-sinhala
font-noto-tamil
font-noto-telugu
font-noto-thaana
font-noto-thai
font-noto-tibetan
font-noto-tifinagh
font-noto-vai

• Terminus terminus-font -- Monospace font
• BaKoMa font-bakoma-*
• Bitstream Speedo font-bitstream-speedo
• Bera (Bitstream Vera Type 1) font-bitstream-type1 -- Use for LaTeX
• Ubuntu ttf-ubuntu-font-family
• Font Awesome ttf-font-awesome -- Used in Twitter Bootstrap
• GNU FreeFont ttf-freefont -- See link for support for different writing systems/languages
• GNU Unifont unifont -- It contains glyphs of every codepoint
• font-misc-cyrillic -- Cyrillic fonts (Russian/Slavic Style)
• font-screen-cyrillic -- X.org public domain Cyrillic fonts for screen use
• font-misc-ethiopic -- Ethiopic fonts used in Ethiopia and Eritrea
• font-misc-meltho -- For the Syriac language
• font-misc-misc
• ClearlyU fonts font-mutt-misc -- Thai, Ethiopic, Hebrew, Romanian, Persian, Hangul, Greek, Persian, Cyrillic, Macedonian/Serbian, Armenian, Georgian, Lao, Devanagari, Urdu, Cherokee, Thaana. See link to changelog for full list of languages supported.
• tewi font font-tewi -- A tiny bitmap font
• Overpass -- font-overpass
• Luxi fonts -- font-bh-* designed by Kris Holmes and Charles Bigelow which bh is refers to the last name
• Lucida Typewriter -- font-bh-lucidatypewriter-*
• IPA Font font-ipa -- A Japanese font

See Also

• Emojis