Installing Vista Fonts in Ubuntu September 16, 2007
Posted by Carthik in guides, looks and feel, microsoft, packages, ubuntu.trackback
Microsoft’s new ClearType fonts for Vista are great. The fonts include Constantia, Corbel, Calibri, Cambria, Candara and Consolas.
Getting them installed in Ubuntu is a breeze, thanks to a script I found.
To install the Vista ClearType fonts in Ubuntu, you need to install cabextract first. Cabextract is a utility found in the universe repository, so before you run the following command, make sure you have universe enabled in your repository list. Once this is done, install cabextract using:
$sudo apt-get install cabextract
Then, once that is done, use this script to install the Vista fonts. Create a file called “vista-fonts-installer.sh” in your home (~) directory.
Then open up a text editor and copy and paste the script into that file.
Do a chmod a+x ~/vista-fonts-installer.sh to make the file/script executable.
Then run the script using:
$ ~/vista-fonts-installer.sh
The script downloads the Powerpoint Viewer installer from microsoft.com, and then extracts the Vista cleartype fonts using cabextract. These fonts are then installed in the ~/.fonts directory.
Please remember that the ClearType Vista fonts are not free as in they are not GPL-ed or made available under a re-distributable license. Since you are downloading the fonts from the MS website, and since you might already have a Windows XP/Vista license, this is not a crime, but consider yourself warned against the perils of supporting closed systems 
Update::
- Looks like the use of these fonts are restricted to only Microsoft Windows/Vista operating systems according to the terms of the license. I am sorry, but you’ll be installing them at your own risk.
- Also, please make sure you use the bash shell, or change the first line of the code to #!/bin/bash
- In retrospect, this was a bad post – I think we’re better off not using stuff folks don’t want us to use – let’s use the better, freer, easier to install fonts.
I have an error :
44: curl: not found
any idea ? :-/
Well, install curl first
$sudo apt-get install curl
I got a different error:
trap: 47: SIGINT: bad trap
i get the same error as #3
i get the error described in #3 as well.
I get the same error here.
Same error here too
I got the same error as #3. I did a little testing with the script and noticed that EXIT, SIGINT, etc. were not returning anything other than strings ‘EXIT’, ‘SIGINT’, etc. rather than their associated numbers. To fix it, I replaced line 47 of the script with:
trap ‘rm -rf “$TMPDIR”‘ 0 1 2 3 9
I am pretty sure that was the author’s intension.
Just removing line 47 works.
No problems.
I’ve a feeling SIGINT etc. is Bash-specific, not POSIX sh.
Just change the shebang to #!/bin/bash and it runs fine.
Or I could zip the fonts and upload them so that everyone can download it and unzip the archive to ~/.fonts, if anyone’s interested…
The EULA on these fonts is much more restrictive than the ms core fonts and such use is a violation:
“Font Components
You may use the fonts that accompany the PowerPoint Viewer only to display and print content from a device running a Microsoft Windows operating system. Additionally, you may do the following:
* Embed fonts in content as permitted by the embedding restrictions in the fonts
* When printing content, temporarily download the fonts to a printer or other output device
You may not copy, install or use the fonts on other devices.”
Better use existing open fonts which grant you the 4 freedoms:
http://unifont.org/fontguide/
http://duffy.fedorapeople.org/fonts/
http://pkg-fonts.alioth.debian.org/review/
That would be a great idea
Isn’t this against the EULA of the powerpoint software viewer? You can’t just take what you want and use it as you like?
And the “since you might already have a Windows XP/Vista license, this is not a crime” line….. I mean come on?
Oh and I’m told hotlinking to MS downloads rather than going through the web interface isn’t good either?
kadath, when did you have distribution rights on these?
@pricechild
no. Even use is restricted:
read it for yourself:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=048DC840-14E1-467D-8DCA-19D2A8FD7485&displaylang=en
It’s locked down to Windows use.
We’re much better off using open fonts which can be freely used, copied modified, redistributed, derived from and embedded no matter what OS. There are some nice quality fonts with all the momentum around open fonts. With fontconfig substitution the choice is pretty clear I would say.
I never see the difference between fonts myself… but I strongly think that this post shouldn’t be on ubuntu’s planet… it looks very bad on ubuntu imo, but I think I should leave it there and will stop posting.
For the record, they do look marginally better than their predecessors, however, the DejaVu family looks a lot better than the lot of them.
For the record:
Constantina ~= Times New Roman ~= DejaVu Serif
Corbel ~= Trebuchet MS
Calibri ~= Arial ~= DejaVu Sans Serif
Cambria ~= Lucida Bold ~= DejaVu Serif (Bold)
Candara ~= Trebuchet MS
Consolas ~= Lucida Console ~= DejaVu
Unfortunately, I dont know of any Open Source Humanist style font.
“You may use the fonts that accompany the PowerPoint Viewer only to display and print content from a device running a Microsoft Windows operating system. (…) You may not copy, install or use the fonts on other devices.”
I’m sorry for the trouble folks – maybe non-free fonts aren’t worth the trouble. I’ll stop short of deleting this post since it is already out there.
As an added explanation, it was this comment on an earlier post that made me go looking for a solution.
[...] future reference: Installing Vista ClearType Fonts in Ubuntu Trackback Sunday, September 16, 2007 [...]
[...] just caught up on my feeds, and read Carthik Sharma’s post, Installing Vista Fonts In Ubuntu. From a completely Free Software standpoint, I’m going to argue why you would not want to do [...]
Not too happy about finding this kind of post on planet Ubuntu.
I’ve been through a number of years using Linux where w32codecs and msttcorefonts and more was a necessary step of every install (for a normal home desktop with recreational use). Lately, this need has disappeared thanks to the awesome work of the free software community. I don’t want to see anyone advocate taking a step back in this regard, not even for “the heck of it”.
Of course I see no ill will in the post.
Just think it may send the wrong message.
[...] Installing Vista Fonts in Ubuntu « Ubuntu Blog vista fontok ubuntun (tags: ubuntu vista fonts linux useful microsoft font) [...]
Are these fonts just truetype fonts?
I think its appropriate to delete the post (or at least the downloadable script) as I’m having trouble seeing how it could be legitimately used given the context.
Copyrights are important to open source and its only fair that we equally respect the copyrights of others. Otherwise the whiff of hypocrisy will be in the air.
oh, and it good for your karma.
The reason that “trap” is a problem for #3 and others is that trap is built into the Bourne Again SHell (i.e. bash) and feisty and later versions of Ubuntu (i.e. those released on or after 2006.10) do not use bash as their built-in shell.
If the first line of the script was:
#!/bin/bash
instead of
#!/bin/sh
these problems would be avoided.
I’d also change the lines in 40-something to this:
if ! [ -e "$ARCHIVE" ] ; then
if exists curl ; then curl -O “$URL”
elif exists wget ; then wget “$URL”
elif exists fetch ; then fetch “$URL”
elif true; then echo ‘You need one of the following programs: curl, wget
or fetch or I cannot continue.’
fi
fi
The fonts appear to be installing into the current users profile folder /home/user/.fonts even though I specifically ran the script as sudo. This is not very good on a multi user system where you want all users to see the fonts, maybe when the script is run as root, the fonts should be instaledl to /usr/share/fonts instead.
I typed the following to correct mine:
sudo mkdir /usr/share/fonts/Vista
sudo mv ~/.fonts/* /usr/share/fonts/Vista
sudo fc-cache -vf
log out/in
The point is, people of Canonical should also consider making new fonts that look as good as what Microsoft’s has.
As a geek, i think this post is worthy, so don’t delete it.
No problems.
easy/quick howto, I had some problems using the script. curl utility problem, and it was terminated by signal. I didn’t fix it, just extracted some necessary commands from it.
apt-get install cabextract
wget http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/5/a/f5a3df76-d856-4a61-a6bd-722f52a5be26/PowerPointViewer.exe
cabextract -L -F ppviewer.cab -d . PowerPointViewer.exe
cabextract -L -F ‘*.TTF’ -d ~/.fonts ppviewer.cab
cd ~/.fonts && chmod 600 *.ttf
It will be fine if someone doesn’t need automation.
[...] Fuente de inspiración [...]
The fonts appear to be installing into the current users profile folder /home/user/.fonts even though I specifically ran the script as sudo. This is not very good on a multi user system where you want all users to see the fonts, maybe when the script is run as root, the fonts should be instaledl to /usr/share/fonts instead.
I typed the following to correct mine:
sudo mkdir /usr/share/fonts/Vista
sudo mv ~/.fonts/* /usr/share/fonts/Vista
sudo fc-cache -vf
log out/in
I have make it on my ubuntu, but didnt know why, i have some trouble. My Ubuntu is slow on first boot. Has anyone know why ?
A lot of people seem to think this post is sacrilege, but I appreciate it.
It’s all well and good for the purists to say “use free fonts”, but the problem is that some of us have to cope with other people who use proprietary stuff on a regular basis, and need to make certain the fonts render correctly. One of my professors loves to use Calibri in his PowerPoint presentations (ah, if only he could upload them to WebCT as PDF files!), so the text is completely out of alignment if I don’t have Calibri installed (it’s very nice to not have to go through and change all the fonts on 20+ slides before printing!).
I think the new fonts look beautiful on Ubuntu.
Where are you, Carthik? Don’t stop posting !
I have make it on my ubuntu, but didnt know why, i have some trouble.
This is a great blog. Thanks for the info.
Same error here too
Works ok for me.
can you do wingdings?
I found an easier way.
I just copy them over from my Windows partition.
works for me alas
How do you install or download just regular free fonts off the internet? I’m sort of a clueless computer user, I’ve been dabbling in HTML, but am to lazy and confusted to figure out how to do this myself.
Thanks For the tips
I have been to your webpage alot of times and really find it interesting.
Just found this really cool article about the Nintendo Wii and making it 3D, just amazing:
Nintendo Wii Remote Video
Why not just get Vista instead of imitating it?
Why buy Vista, MS is evil. There is are some interesting insights into what goes on inside Microsoft by a Microsoft blogger north central idaho or something. Microsoft management is said to have a rule “don’t leave loose money on the table” and they may be faking their commitment to protecting the environment. Allegedly they might even be taking major money from environmental groups for their new green msn site while not even agreeing with the message.
a great tips for Vista user to use ClearType Vista fonts
For those that do want to obtain a proper license for the Vista fonts, Microsoft has licensed a company called Ascender Corp to distribute the fonts to Mac OS and Linux users. The fonts aren’t cheap, but then the prices are similar to OpenType fonts from Adobe ($35.00 per font). More info here: http://www.ascendercorp.com/ctfonts.html
I have a dual boot laptop, with a legal copy of MS Office 2007 running under XP on the other (NTFS) partition. I made a link to the windows font directory and therefore obtain the fonts from there. With sub-pixeling enabled all the C series fonts look fine in OpenOffice but are antialiased in Firefox.
Sorry (comment no. 63). I mean not antialiased, i.e. ugly.
System is Ubuntu Gutsy.
When I run the script I get the following error:
There is no .fonts directory in your home.
Is fontconfig set up for privately installed fonts?
How do I fix this?
Thanks.
[...] great post describes howto install and use Microsoft’s new ClearType fonts used in Microsoft Windows Vista [...]
Open your home folder in Nautilus, create a new folder, and then title it “.fonts” (quotes removed, obviously). Couldn’t be easier.
thank you my friend but i will try first install window vista first because now i use SP2
thank
How about installing Office 2007 in Ubuntu in a very convenient way. Here is a tutorial http://goodbutbad.blogspot.com/2008/03/install-m-office-2007-in-ubuntu.html
it’s not working for me
Hi. This information was very useful to me coz I was struggling to get vista font for ubuntu. If you have time please visit thanveer.page.tl
Dan told me about this blog of ubunt
I thought you guys never had any blog
but w/e nice stuff
is there a way to find your forums
This is nice.
I would be great to know if the fonts could be downloaded through the site.
Some fonts can be downloaded form Suruwat.Com http://www.suruwat.com/free_download/
$ sudo apt-get install curl
The script didn’t work but executing some commands on the terminal and exclude where erros apear works. thanks!
That’s a nice look with this fonts on my desktop. and Documents look beter
Liberation fonts is everything one might need. Look in repos.
Hi!
Willing to spread news of this?
http://www.gnuband.org/2008/05/29/help_translate_the_video_mandela_describes_the_concept_of_ubuntu/
“Please help in translating the video in your language (via dotsub) and spread the concept of Ubuntu! It is easy and fun!”
thanks!
IMHO, vista fonts doesn’t look appropriate on CRT monitor, but appear sharp on LCD
wow.. pretty useful thing actually, i always wanted to install some fonts on my ubuntu like these vista ones but didn’t really know how..
YAY!!
I’ve used some of those in my site http://www.QueenZSoftware.com/Forums and all made in ubuntu!
I read the title, comments, and thought to myself…Why would I want to do this? From commodore to slackware, Free+openBSD and Ubuntu… I support this “Swiss Cheese” on a daily basis, I sure don’t want anything remotely/locally to do with that company(including the forbidden fruit too… 3G anyone?).
To any non-Vista user out there, including victims of Calibri-ous professors: You don’t really need these fonts… and you don’t really want these fonts either.
Why ? If the professor uses Calibri, understand first, that it is because it is some sort of default font on his Vista Office, and Vista is more to blame than the good old professor.
Yes, there is a solution: 1. Don’t ever use PPT viewer or MS Office Viewer on Ubuntu unless it is the last resort. Just open the PPT or DOC in Open Office, and presto! OpenOffice will find a good substitue font for rendering purposes without touching the document. Not exactly the same, but good enough, considering the legal angle… which is my next point.
Yes, for legal reasons, I recommend staying away from these Vista fonts except when you are on Vista. Reasons:
1. The use of these fonts outside Vista is illegal. Not just on Linux, use on Windows XP too is illegal. It doesn’t matter if you own a copy of Vista. Illegal is illegal. Read the Ascender Corp news linked on this page previously.
2. The danger of passing on the disease: you, or somebody using your Ubuntu system, will soon be producing documents containing these illegal fonts and further pulling along more unsuspecting masses down the slippery slope.
So… PLEASE STOP and consider. It is in your best interest NOT TO USE the Vista fonts when you are NOT on Vista (Windows XP folks too, please take heed!)
If OpenOffice actually found a good substiture font, I’d agree with the last poster. But OOo doesn’t, not even close. It completely destroys presentations without this font. Even with it, it kinda mangles it… but at least texts are in pretty good shape.
So to not have to use this, we’ll have to fix OOo’s importer first. If there is any suitable replacement font at all?
This is a totally unavoidable problem today, especially since the Calibri font is actually really good. Hard then to argue it should not be used, to people who doesn’t care about anything else.
To people saying it’s a step back to install non-free fonts, i think we have the right to choose…if you don’t want this fonts simple don’t install them..
Great Info.
“”I’m sort of a clueless computer user, I’ve been dabbling in HTML, but am to lazy and confusted to figure out how to do this myself. “”
Then i suggest you take up gardening. computing is not for you.
thanks very good!
Отличный у вас блог ! Скажите плз где скин такой классный скачали ?
Отлично написано. Спасибо.
got error too
This is awesome, I love the fonts..
Я тоже вордпресс себе на блог поставил ) Самы гибкий двиг имхо..
Thank you very much.
Nice, getting the same errors but I think with a little work I’ll get these installed.
I do have encountered this kind of errors too.. and since i ask what is the point of having vista on ubuntu? I already love Ubuntu from the starts now it start to shake me more because of it’s great features..
хороший рассказ, все разложено по полкам
My name is Cliff ROBBINS,
Keftab
Nice blog. Found very good information here. Your posts look similer to this blog http://epshi.com and i found some post you copied from this blog.
Excellent Information!
Vista fucking SUUUUUCKKK!KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
AYIIIIYYAYYAYYAYAYYAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
how can i install it?
vista is big problem for me .
I found this guide on how to install Google Chrome on Ubuntu, I don’t know who would want to do such a thing, but at least now he has a guide on how to do it….
http://www.fixya.com/support/r1238728-install_google_chrome_ubuntu
Good luck, I’m sticking to Firefox
I know this is not the best post for this comment, but I didn’t know where to add this post to so here goes.
no, vista is very best!
very-very thanks!
Stopped posting, altogether, now?
Works great, no hassles, thanks!
The free fonts are nice but they aren’t quite as fine as the Microsoft fonts. Since Microsoft is the single biggest war criminal in the world, I don’t think we should have any reservations about “stealing” “their” fonts. Besides, intellectual property is a myth anyway. Take the fonts, use the fonts, to hell with Microsoft.
Vista is good, but alta-vista
thank you very much
Ubuntu is the best. Vista needs more resources and need more money…
Hello
Wow this is very illegal, and you could get in trouble for this. Why go through the trouble when you could just use openoffice to automatically replace this font with another. If you were creating a document, you would just causing other people who dont use vista problems, since they would also have to install the fonts.
For those who can, try this:
Create a xlsx spreasheet in Office 2007, and use the Calibri font.
Then open that file in OpenOffice with the appropriate plugin, under Linux.. (I just notice this, but it probably also happens in word..)
What font are you using now under Linux? And I haven’t installed the vista fonts!
i tried ubuntu on my second computer but the installation froze
i using ubuntu8.10 .
absolutely no problem in installation ..very nice and simple !
Thanks
Good work there…
Here’s my post about Ubuntu and its various distros:
http://opensourcethefuture.blog.co.in/2008/12/12/ubuntu/
I like the font, but I still wish it was easier to install. Hopefully this type of stuff gets easier and easier as the distros keep coming out.
these fonts are cool than older version of microsoft..
i like vista fonts a lot. do you have vista fonts for free download?
i like those fonts. they’re cool!
This is nice Man, Now i can add my vista font to my ubuntu.
Thank you very much, worked like a charm on Ubuntu Jaunty 9.04.
This script don’t work straight on a multi user system, i had to create a .fonts directory in /home for the script to work then move the fonts to /usr/share/fonts.
Great Tutorial
The script worked, I also had to create a .fonts directory in /home but now how did you move the fonts to /usr/share/fonts. Thanks for the post and any help.
[...] Deels naar http://ubuntu.wordpress.com/2007/09/16/installing-vista-fonts-in-ubuntu/ [...]
isnt there any GPL ed version of such fonts available?
thank youu
how about windows 7 fonts? how can we do that?
Vista fonts are just the same with XP fonts. I don’t know about the Windows 7 fonts. I think Windows 7 has more fonts
I have to agree that it’s quite important to note that the use of these fonts is in fact against the end user agreement.
More important, is to remark that there are cleaner free fonts.
I’d like to thank the people whom pointed them out.
all font is beautiful but ubuntu’s worked fine. wonderful..
ubuntu’s fonts are so cool! I’m so contented with ubuntu!
are microsoft fonts’ working in ubuntu too?
I think Ubuntu is an excellent operating system, so better take the resources of my computer
I think windows is an operating system with many privatizations so only use ubuntu is only good!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks, worked like a charm
I understand everyone’s protest here, I really do. But we have to face reality. Sometimes we do business with people in the windows world. Sometimes those people have document standards you have to adhere to. And sometimes the only way to do this, while using the software of your preference, is to bend the rules a little. Also, not everyone lives under the umbrella of US copyright laws so it’s not illegal everywhere.
THIS IS USEFUL TO PEOPLE.
That said:
Carthik, please fix the script & instructions:
1) there are too many tuts that suggest chmod a+x when u+x will do the trick. This is one of them.
2) add the shebang line to the script. it saves time if it’s needed and does no harm if it’s not.
3) the script should create ~/.fonts if it doesn’t exist instead of dying.
4) mention that curl is required. it’s not installed by default on ubuntu.
Here ok. Very well.
Thanks!
Ubuntu has (almost) everything you could ever need. But I guess at the end of the day everybody wants choices. So its good to see such things that are available.
[...] Guia per instal·lar els tipus de lletra del Windows Vista a linux (ja, ja ho sé… però he d’admetre que en certa manera és un tipus de lletra bonic). [...]
> Since Microsoft is the single biggest war criminal in the world, I don’t think we should have any reservations about “stealing” “their” fonts. Besides, intellectual property is a myth anyway. Take the fonts, use the fonts, to hell with Microsoft.
You can always tell when you’re dealing with somebody who’s never actually created anything worth paying for. If he ever does, bet your ass he’ll be the first one to sue anybody who takes it.
“War criminal.” What a fuckwit.
Works like a charm. Thank you!
try install and restart your computer. error might happen when it is not proper shut down.
OMG this actually works. I love ubuntu and forever i will be.
Ubuntu will be the next big thing.. watch out for it..
good projected. nice documents.
en güzel film sitresidir.
thanks,good job
Your article is very good! Helpful to me, I have learned a lot of things, very grateful!
I find some useful resources,may be you just find it,or you may need it sometime!
I know a little about it, now i learn it,thanks!
Thank you very much,it’s helpful to me
thank you! i installed xp
hmm nice blog thnakss
thanks Carthik, I’ve seen many web sites with the calibri font, this will allow ubuntu users to properly view web pages as the designer intended
thanks Carthik, I’ve seen many web sites with the calibri font lately, this will allow ubuntu users to view those web pages as the designer intended.
[...] also quite easily install the new Vista fonts by Microsoft (Consolas, Calibri, etc), as described here or manually like [...]
wll done. no problem on mine. Thanks.