Fonts
Fonts available in Alpine Linux covers a wide range of languages. If you can't see your language and instead (tofu), a substitute character appears, you need to install the font that has glyphs (little picture) created for it. The preferred location for user installed font is ~/.fonts, especially when downloaded from unknown sources.
The system font directory /usr/share/fonts is reserved for the font packages installed using apk. The trusted system fonts that Alpine Linux packages are from well known sources like corporations like Google, Adobe, open organizations like Xorg or well known font designers or projects licensed as SIL, GPL, etc.
Installation
Default internal fb fonts (tty console) or xorg fonts (desktops) are suitable for a default installation. font-misc-misc is installed with Xorg, so fonts for most languages (Japanese, Korean, Latin, Cyrillic) are already covered. Exceptions are Arabic, Persian, Thai, Tamil, etc. according to the Wikipedia Page on languages for article translation.
These selections will cover most languages and are a good fit for most setups:
# apk add font-terminus font-inconsolata font-dejavu font-noto font-noto-cjk font-awesome font-noto-extra
These selections add special support for cyrillic languages like Russian and Serbian, etc.:
# apk add font-vollkorn font-misc-cyrillic font-mutt-misc font-screen-cyrillic font-winitzki-cyrillic font-cronyx-cyrillic
These selections cover special Asiatic languages like Japanese, etc.:
# apk add font-terminus font-noto font-noto-thai font-noto-tibetan font-ipa font-sony-misc font-jis-misc
The following will add some partially supported Chinese fonts:
# apk add font-isas-misc
These selection will cover, in general Arabic, Thai, Ethiopic, Hebrew, Romanian, Persian, Korean Hangul, Greek, Persian, Russian/Slavic Cyrillic, Macedonian/Serbian, Armenian, Georgian, Lao, Devanagari, Urdu (Hindustani as in Northern India and Pakistan), Cherokee, Thaana languages support for desktop setups:
# apk add font-terminus font-noto font-noto-extra font-arabic-misc # apk add font-misc-cyrillic font-mutt-misc font-screen-cyrillic font-winitzki-cyrillic font-cronyx-cyrillic # apk add font-noto-arabic font-noto-armenian font-noto-cherokee font-noto-devanagari font-noto-ethiopic font-noto-georgian # apk add font-noto-hebrew font-noto-lao font-noto-malayalam font-noto-tamil font-noto-thaana font-noto-thai
Configuration
Changing default font
fc-cache -fv utility from fontconfig package can be used to display the font locations and to update the cache.
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.
Per-user Configuration is made in ~/.fonts.conf but it's hard to configure. An easier method is to use the ~/.Xresources file.
The following will set up for all users, a minimal resource usage for fonts. No antialiasing. No hint, etc:
# cat > /home/*/.Xresources << EOF Xft.antialias: 0 Xft.rgba: rgb Xft.autohint: 0 Xft.hinting: 1 Xft.hintstyle: hintslight EOF
Console font
The default console font built in Kernel for all monitors used to be VGA8x16. A kernel setting allowed automatic use of TER16x32 font for high resolution HiDPI monitors like UHD 4K, and enabled in Alpine Linux since v3.22. This change does not have any effect on standard Full HD monitors (1920x1080).
Changing console font
The default console font can be changed without installing additional font packages i.e making use of kernel builtin fonts like VGA8x8, VGA8x16 and TER16x32. Setting the kernel parameter fbcon=font:FONT_NAME will effect the change. Setting the kernel parameter fbcon=font:VGA8x16 for HiDPI monitors will override their default console font i.e TER16x32.
Console font can also be changed by installing better looking fonts packages like font-terminus which installs fonts in /usr/share/consolefonts.
- Install the font-terminus package:
# apk add font-terminus
- Try out fonts in a virtual console using
setfontcommand from kbd package as follows:# setfont /usr/share/consolefonts/ter-132n.psf.gz
- Edit the /etc/conf.d/consolefont file and set the font of your choice, e.g.
Contents of /etc/conf.d/consolefont
... consolefont="ter-132n.psf.gz" ... - Enable
consolefontservice using the command# rc-update add consolefont boot
Changing GRUB font and font size
The font in the GRUB boot screen might also be too small on high-resolution monitors. In order to change the default font and font size in grub, you first need install grub-mkfont package:
# apk add grub-mkfont
Then you can choose one of the fonts from /usr/share/fonts folder, say /usr/share/fonts/inconsolata/Inconsolata-Regular.otf from the font-inconsolata package. Then you can create a grub font with the desired size:
# grub-mkfont -s32 /usr/share/fonts/inconsolata/Inconsolata-Regular.otf -o /boot/grub/fonts/inconsolata-32.pf2
Here we are using size 32 but you can adjust it.
After creating the font you need to edit /etc/default/grub and add the configuration with the path for your selected font, e.g. /boot/grub/fonts/inconsolata-32.pf2:
Contents of /etc/default/grub
Finally you can run
# update-grub
and then you can reboot your system.
List of available fonts
Click font-* to view the complete list of font packages in package database. Given below is a partial list of font packages.
| Font | Package name | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Utopia | font-adobe-utopia-* | |
| Noto | font-noto-* | These fonts covers around 1000 languages. If Alpine doesn't have a package for your language, you can search and download from Google into your ~/.font. noto comes from no to fu or gradual elimination of substitute characters off the web. |
| Terminus | font-terminus | Monospace font |
| BaKoMa | font-bakoma-* | Fonts for TeX typesetting system (for academics in the math and sciences and book writers) and TeX (WYSIWYG) editors |
| Bitstream Vera | font-bitstream-* | |
| Bera (Bitstream Vera Type 1) | font-bitstream-type1 | Use for LaTeX |
| Font Awesome | font-awesome | It was used in Twitter Bootstrap. It is a font representing things and brands as Icons. |
| GNU FreeFont | font-freefont | See link for support for different writing systems/languages |
| GNU Unifont | font-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-misc | Bitmap fonts in PCF format (shows glyphs of many types and installed by default by xorg-server package) | |
| ClearlyU fonts | font-mutt-misc | Thai, Ethiopic, Hebrew,
Romanian, Persian, Korean Hangul, Greek, Persian, Russian/Slavic Cyrillic, Macedonian/Serbian, Armenian, Georgian, Lao, Devanagari, Urdu (Hindustani as in Northern India and Pakistan), Cherokee, Thaana. See link to changelog for full list of languages supported. |
| Overpass | font-overpass | |
| Luxi fonts | font-bh-* | designed by Kris Holmes and Charles Bigelow which bh is refers to the last name |
| IPA Font | font-ipa | A Japanese font |
| Chrome OS core fonts | font-croscore | |
| Vollkorn | font-vollkorn | A serif font with glyphs for Cyrillic (Russian/Slavic), Greek, Polish, Dutch, Bulgarian, Serbian, and small capitals |
| Open Sans | font-opensans | |
| Cantarell | font-cantarell | Designed for reading and the default GNOME font |
| DejaVu | font-dejavu | A modified Bitstream Vera with more styles and unicode coverage |
| Linux Libertine | font-linux-libertine | A free alternative to Times New Roman |
| Liberation | font-liberation | A free alternative to Helvetica and Arial |
| Inconsolata | font-inconsolata | A monospace font designed for terminals and reading source code |
| mononoki | font-mononoki | A font for programming and code review |
| Droid | font-droid / font-droid-nonlatin | Designed for small screens and was used in older Android |
| font-schumacher-misc | Fixed width fonts by Dale Schumacher | |
| font-sony-misc | Japanese Kana fonts by Sony Electronics | |
| font-cursor-misc | A standard cursor font | |
| font-sun-misc | Cursor and glyph fonts by Sun Microsystems | |
| font-winitzki-cyrillic | A Cyrillic (Russian) font by Serge Winitzki designed for proofreading mixed Russian-English text | |
| font-isas-misc | Chinese Song Ti style fonts (thinner horizontal lines compared to vertical) | |
| font-jis-misc | A Japanese International Standard font | |
| IBM Courier | font-ibm-type1 | |
| font-dec-misc | A Digital Equipment Corporation cursor and session fonts | |
| font-cronyx-cyrillic | A Russian font for X11 by Cronyx | |
| font-arabic-misc | A bitmap and proportional Arabic font in newspaper style [1] | |
| Microsoft Core fonts | msttcorefonts-installer | Non-free proprietary Microsoft Core fonts for the Web |
Due to their licensing, non-free fonts like Microsoft Core fonts are not recommended for commercial or open source projects.