How do I install the Terminus font?

Question

It may seem silly, but I cannot find out how to install Terminus such that I can use it as a regular font. I also want to make it my default console font and for everything else, but I have no idea how.

I have tried using the Ubuntu Software Center, but the font is not there. I have tried the xfonts-terminus package, but it does not appear in my font list. I tried downloading the source manually, but there are no ttf or otf files. Any ideas?

Solution 1

The only fonts that are offered by the source at http://terminus-font.sourceforge.net/ are bitmap fonts which are disabled in Ubuntu by default.

I tested building from source using the directions in the included README using a LiveUSB of Ubuntu 18.04.3, but the font was not available in LibreOffice even after installing and running sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig

You will likely need to enable bitmap fonts on your system to install this font as offered by the developer. You might also try to find a fork has TTF/OTF fonts. Perhaps this is what you are looking for: "Terminus" on GitHub

If that does not work, check out: How can I activate bitmap fonts? and How to disable bitmap fonts?

Solution 2

I'm a newbie at this. Apologies if this doesn't help. But I'm running Ubuntu 18.04 and installed it by using this page's ttf version of Terminus.

Solution 3

There is an issue with terminus (and bitmap fonts in general) in recent Ubuntu. The issue is of both technical and personal nature. Technical part is that old formats of bitmap fonts are difficult to maintain, so pango developers decided to drop them. Political part is that many people believe that for hi-dpi monitors pixel fonts are no longer needed, so everyone should get a good screen and use a ttf version of terminus. See the discussion here: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/cjcrwk/pango_144_drops_support_for_bitmap_fonts/

For the time being there is a workaround how to make terminus for Ubuntu 20.04 and latest pango: How can I activate bitmap fonts on 20.04?

Hopefully, one day Ubuntu will get a native terminus-font-otb package.

Comments

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson]

What have you tried? Have you installed the xfonts-terminus package?

[mchid]

For the console version, you also need to install console-setup-linux. I think you can run: sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup to set the font once it is installed.

[swaplink]

Interesting, I think this is the same version or similar as the fonts-terminus package now. I could be wrong though. I just found that package on Ubuntu 20.04. This might be the way to go for installations older than that.