Install Microsoft Fonts in Ubuntu

If like me you use Linux+ OpenOffice at home but are forced to use Microsoft Office at work/ school, you may want to install Microsoft fonts on your Linux machine. This will ensure that a document created in MS Word will look like it's supposed to in OpenOffice. Web browsing will also be a lot smoother as most, if not all, websites are designed with MS fonts in mind.

To get MS fonts you will need to install a package called msttcorefonts. The package contains the following font types:

• Andale Mono
• Arial Black
• Arial (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
• Comic Sans MS (Bold)
• Courier New (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
• Georgia (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
• Impact
• Times New Roman (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
• Trebuchet (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
• Verdana (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)
• Webdings

To install on Ubuntu, you need to first enable the 'Universe' repository. Once you have done that, go ahead and type the following into your terminal:

$sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts

To see the changes you will need to refresh the fonts cache, use the following command:

$sudo fc-cache -fv

If there are any other fonts you wish to install that aren't included in this package, all you have to do is copy the font files to the ~/.fonts/ directory. Enjoy.