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A lot of people have been asking us to write an article on what fonts to use in Ubuntu, so here it is. These are my favourite fonts and among the few I can use but of course that may not be the case for everybody, so you can share your favourite font(s) in the comments!


A note: these fonts might not look very different, but that's because they are not intended for logos and such - they are designed for readability. Also, you can't tell how good/bad a font really is until you try it on your own computer.


1. Aller


Aller font
(Click to enlarge)


Is it just me or does Aller look a lot like the new Ubuntu font?

Download Aller font


2. Lucida Grande (Mac font)


Lucida Grande font
(Click to enlarge)

Download Lucida Grande font

3. PT Sans


PT Sans font
(Click to enlarge)


Download PT Sans


4. Luxi Sans


Luxi Sans font
(Click to enlarge)

Install Luxi Sans in Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install ttf-xfree86-nonfree


5. Lucida Sans


Lucida Sans font
(Click to enlarge)

You can install it in Ubuntu using the following command:
sudo apt-get install sun-java6-fonts



For the last 2 fonts I kept the obvious choices (which shouldn't miss from any fonts related post):

6. Droid Sans


Droid Sans font
(Click to enlarge)


Install it in Ubuntu using the following command:
sudo apt-get install ttf-droid



7. Liberation Sans - the font licensed by Red Hat


Liberation Sans font
(Click to enlarge)

It's installed by default in Ubuntu but just in case, you can install it with:
sudo apt-get install ttf-liberation


In case you don't know, to install a font you manually download (not installed via repositories) in the latest Ubuntu 10.04, all you have to do is double click it and then click the "Install" button. Then, to change the font, go to System > Preferences > Appearence, on the "Font" tab.



Update: like you've requested, here is also a post on: 7 Of The Best Ubuntu Terminal (Fixed Width) Fonts


In other font related news, Canonical released the new Ubuntu font for testing yesterday - but in private beta only. You could extract it from the existing PDFs, but it's not all that good (just search Google for "how to extract font from PDF").