I’ve written software on Linux, compiled kernels, set up servers, and a whole host of other pretty technical feats. Having been a die-hard Linux user for 10 years, I thought I had handled just about every situation a desktop user is likely to encounter. That is, until I installed Linux for a friend, who then said to me “Ok, so how do I add new fonts?”.

Fortunately modern Linux distributions have much better fonts and font tools available. From font creation/editing to font management, there are plenty of outstanding applications to help you in your quest for font nirvana.

There are plenty of Web sites to download fonts that are low- or no-cost, but finding free and open source fonts is a little more difficult. Here are five resources to check out the next time you need something with just the perfect slope or serif.

"Mark Pilgrim is an important software freedom advocate, famous for his blog posts about switching from Mac OS X to GNU/Linux (nb Gruber’s reply) and from MovableType to WordPress. So I’m happy to see him championing web fonts, since this little feature of CSS3 that is going to ship in all major browsers this year hasn’t got enough press I think..."

Fonty Python is available from the fontypython package in both Debian and Ubuntu in Universe. Fonty is a wxPython app so will work in any desktop environment. It also has a command-line interface which avoids the gui.

"Gnu FreeFont is a free family of scalable outline fonts, suitable for general use on computers and for desktop publishing. It is Unicode-encoded for compatability with all modern operating systems..." -- via http://www.gnu.org/software/freefont/ --

Hiran has just released a new GPL 3 font-exception licensed font called Rufscript. It's a handwriting font that would be really useful for comic strips and maybe labeling photos for a scrapbook and made completely with Free Software toolchain : GIMP, Inkscape, Font Forge. This font is a birthday present to his classmate Lithu.