Fonts? What fonts?

[Barrie Greed]

Woody

It's not looking good. Only URW Bookman and Georgia appear on my copy of Ubuntu. That is not to say you cannot get fonts elsewhere to add to the collection. You wil lnot get Palatino as it is still copyrighted. You should be able to get zapf calligraphic as a stand in. There will no doubt be clones for the others available from free font download sites.

On Ubuntu the fonts normally live in /usr/share/fonts with some other font files in the same area of /usr/share.

Barrie Greed

[woody649]

Thanks again, Barrie.

'Tis not the end of the world. I have fonts ... oh, do I have fonts! I have bought several collections over the years. The latest one alone includes 7500 fonts, so I won't suffer font deprivation. I'm just curious about whether the Linux distros include a baseline package of fonts, or if fonts in Linux are strictly a la carte.

I have a recent copy of Linux Lite installed on a USB stick. I just checked, and there is no /usr/share directory. I guess I'll have to boot into the USB stick, fire up LibreOffice, and see what fonts show up. But that will only tell me about Linux Lite -- I guess each distro will handle fonts differently.

Palatino is still copyrighted? I thought that was one of the oldest fonts around.

Hmmm ... I'm in the U.S., and it appears that fonts cannot be copyrighted in the U.S. Font designs can be patented, but the patents are only good for 15 years. Palatino was designed in 1949 ...

That 7500 font collection includes five Palatino knock-offs, so I'm covered. It's more just a question of how many fonts I may have to install if/when I shift to some flavor of Linux.

[Steve Rindsberg]

Originally Posted by woody649

Your laptop is probably running 32-bit Windows. I think Office 2016 was the last version that had a 32-bit version. (Not certain on that). It shouldn't matter -- the file format hasn't changed since Microsoft introduced the new file format with Office 2007. (.docx, .xlsx. and .pptx)

No, other than a couple random VMs, I don't have any PCs running 32-bit Windows. It's not a matter of "bitness" ... even 2021 has a 32-bit version, but 64-bit became the default install a few versions back.

This is just MS trying to force folk into Win10 and beyond.

[Steve Rindsberg]

Originally Posted by woody649

I'm not at all worried about it, but I do think it's a rather silly situation. Times New Roman (times.ttf) is the same font, whether I got it with Windows Home or Windows Professional, and as far as I know there's no way from looking at a printed book to know if I formatted it using Office Home and Student or Office Enterprise Edition.

Or, for that matter, if I used Word, LibreOffice, or SoftMaker Office.

No, other than a couple random VMs, I don't have any PCs running 32-bit Windows. It's not a matter of "bitness" ... even 2021 has a 32-bit version, but 64-bit became the default install a few versions back.

This is just MS trying to force folk into Win10 and beyond.

[Steve Rindsberg]

Well that was weird. That's a reply to your earlier post, obviously.

No idea why the forum dumped it here.

[Barrie Greed]

Woody

I have a recent copy of Linux Lite installed on a USB stick. I just checked, and there is no /usr/share directory. I guess I'll have to boot into the USB stick, fire up LibreOffice, and see what fonts show up. But that will only tell me about Linux Lite -- I guess each distro will handle fonts differently.

I have never used Linux Lite but since it is based on Ubuntu I am baffled if it has no /usr/share directory. It is a basic directory in most Linux distributions. As the aim of Linux Lite is to simplify Linux they have probably just tried to hide the base file system and show only user files. I'm fairly sure it is there somewhere under File System. But firing up Libre Office Writer should equally show you what is available.

Palatino is still copyrighted? I thought that was one of the oldest fonts around.

Linotype seem to think they have both copyright and trademark on Palatino but if the typeface is only protected by patent then presumably there is no problem with the knock-offs.

It's more just a question of how many fonts I may have to install if/when I shift to some flavor of Linux.

Your list of fonts did not seem too much of a burden. If Linux Lite have done the job properly then installing new fonts should be easy.


Barrie Greed