Spice up Your System with Open Source Fonts

Fonts are like candies: you can never get enough of them. So if you are getting tired of the fonts that come with your system, here is a hand-picked collection of a few open source fonts that deserve a closer look.

The Liberation fonts are designed as drop-in replacements for the widely-used proprietary fonts like Times New Roman, Arial, Helvetica, Courier New, etc. The Liberation font pack consists of three sets: Sans (a substitute for Arial, Albany, and Helvetica), Serif (a substitute for Times New Roman) and Mono (a substitute for Courier New, Cumberland, and Courier).

The SIL organization offers an impressive collection of fonts released under the Open Font License. Here you will find fonts designed for specific purposes (e.g., the Antika font is designed especially for literacy education) and specific languages (e.g., Arabic Script Unicode fonts) as well as all-around high-quality fonts like Gentium and Charis.

If you need a serif font that looks every bit as good as Times New Roman, try the Linux Libertine font family. It comes in the regular, italic, bold, bold italic, and small caps styles.

The MgOpen typeface collection offers four font families: MgOpenCanonica (similar to Times Roman), MgOpenCosmetica (similar to Optima), MgOpenModata, and MgOpenModerna (similar to Helvetica). Each font contains four styles: regular, italic, bold, and bold italic.

Arev is a nice sans serif font which can come in handy when you work with languages based on non-Latin alphabets. Since the font provides extensive support for diacritical signs, it’s also suitable for use with “diacritic-heavy” languages like Vietnamese.

The Droid font family designed by Ascender for Google’s Android platform consists of the Droid Sans, Droid Sans Mono and Droid Serif fonts. Each font provides support for Western European, Eastern/Central European, Baltic, Cyrillic, Greek, and Turkish languages. While the Droid fonts are released under the Apache license, neither Google nor Ascender offers a downloadable version of the fonts. But, with a little perseverance, you can get the font working on your system. Download the system.tar.gz archive, unpack it, and you will find the Droid font in the fonts directory.

Finally, if you want to spice up your documents with a pinch of handwritten text, then take a look at the Rufscript font.


19 Responses to “Spice up Your System with Open Source Fonts”
  1. Miguel Says:

    I think that this was the first time I ever saw the horrid Time New Roman used as a good standard for a comparison.

    Good tip with the Droid family.

  2. Thomas Wakefield Says:

    Your ad image for that nice little computer is compromised by the presence of that fluorescent bulb. Those bulbs are know to be of poor quality to begin with plus the worst of all, they contain mercury and are very poisonous to those exposed to the vapors when broken, which they will surely end up as in the land fill.
    Please try another image, perhaps a candle would be better?
    Thanks,
    Thomas in Victoria b.c.

  3. How can fonts be open source? Says:

    How can fonts be open source, do they have source code?

  4. Fuentes libres para tu sistema | Luxiano... Says:

    [...] libres para tu sistema Nov.29, 2008 en General, Miniposts En Linutop mag hicieron un artículo sobre fuentes libres que puedes instalar en tu sistema. Tags: fuentes, [...]

  5. Drew3 Says:

    Thanks for the font info, there are many out of date Linux font pages and it is nice to see current info.

  6. Programas Livres | PROGRAMAS LIVRES Says:

    [...] a dada altura, já tentaram encontrar tipos de letra (fonts) livres. Para vos facilitar a vida, deixo-vos a link para a lista de tipos de letra livres publicada pelo projecto Linutop. Partilhar [...]

  7. links for 2008-11-30 « My place Says:

    [...] Linutop mag : Spice up Your System with Open Source Fonts Fonts are like candies: you can never get enough of them. So if you are getting tired of the fonts that come with your system, here is a hand-picked collection of a few open source fonts that deserve a closer look. (tags: linux open source free fonts) [...]

  8. 3south.ca » Blog Archive » Spice up Your System with Open Source Fonts Says:

    [...] Linutop mag : Spice up Your System with Open Source Fonts Fonts are like candies: you can never get enough of them. So if you are getting tired of the fonts that come with your system, here is a hand-picked collection of a few open source fonts that deserve a closer look. [...]

  9. tip Says:

    This site is interesting as well as informative. Enjoyed browsing through the site. Keep up the good work. Greetings..

  10. Tanie Noclegi w Karpaczu Says:

    Good Blog. Your informations is very helpfull. Thanks a lot

  11. Jamphaila Says:

    Your site displays incorrectly in Opera, but content excellent! Thanks for your wise words =)

  12. Cài đặt Open Fonts cho ubuntu « Will be open source ! Says:

    [...] khảo Linutop mag Posted in Fonts, Office. Tags: Fonts, [...]

  13. forum grafika Says:

    The post makes me to think. This is really puzzling, hmmm…

  14. Treena Daya Says:

    There are certainly quite a lot of details like that to take into consideration. That could be a nice level to deliver up. I provide the ideas above as common inspiration but clearly there are questions like the one you convey up the place a very powerful thing will be working in honest good faith. I don?t know if best practices have emerged round issues like that, however I’m sure that your job is clearly identified as a good game. Each girls and boys feel the impact of only a second’s pleasure, for the rest of their lives.

  15. John Partain Says:

    Hi there was just surfing through the internet looking for some new reading articles when i discovered this post on reddit. I had to write you a comment to show you that I actually appreciated this blog post. I cant find a lot good quality anymore on the net anymore with all the useless posts these days so when I do see a beneficial article I value it. Keep up the fantastic job and I am absolutely sure this website is going to go a long ways and turn out to be very well-liked

  16. parasitologies Says:

    My spouse and i are generally having a tough time , opting-in to the Feed. Referring up with problem 451. Tell me whether some sort of an easy task to deal with fault as well as if its simply just myself . Ive tried using opera and also For example. I will be applying AVG Firewall in addition to i have to be undecided how you can power it down . I’m certainly not outstanding with Computers. Unwell book mark your web site and see if you have reacted. great

  17. Paul Asman Says:

    Fantastic beat ! I wish to apprentice at the same time as you amend your site, how can i subscribe for a blog site? The account helped me a appropriate deal. I were a little bit acquainted of this your broadcast provided bright clear concept

  18. Pokoje Tanie Says:

    Woah this weblog is wonderful i really like studying your articles. Stay up the good paintings! You already know, lots of people are looking round for this information, you can help them greatly.

  19. Linwood Blankenbeckle Says:

    Interesting Message, really enjoyed reading it

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.