Adding Fonts in Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS so LibreOffice can find them

[seppeltronics]

Hello,

I’m trying to install a font on a Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS with Libreoffice 24.8.5.2 installed via Snap.

The Font was installed via the in built installer and is now located at: /home/seppeltronics/.local/share/fonts

However, Libreoffice can not find the font, so I searched for a solution and found that a symbolic link needs to be added, resulting in an error that the filepermissions are read-only.

/snap/libreoffice/current$ sudo ln -s /home/seppeltronics/.local/share/fonts
[sudo] password for seppeltronics:
ln: failed to create symbolic link './fonts': Read-only file system

Is this the only way and how(minimum required permissions) do I need to change the permissions for the folder?

What causes the issue that fonts can not be found, can there be a longterm solution as snap may install newer versions.

Thanks a lot,

Best Regards, Seppel

P.S. Ubuntu and Libreoffice are among the most Linux distributions and most popular text-editor, I’m very surprised that the most trivial thing cause an issue.

[ajlittoz]

Snap packages put a strong emphasis on security. They claim to be independent from your OS (thus containing the dependencies which increases their size compared to standard packages). They are also not allowed to access arbitrary locations in the file system. It is then possible, they can’t access your home directory.

Have you tried installing the font in the system directory?

[seppeltronics]

Hello,

thanks a lot for the reply.

What do you mean by “Installing to the system directory”, in the dialog there was only a install-button and no options. Is there a font-manager in Ubuntu that can bu used?

Or do you mean I should move/copy it to a system-folder, and if so, which one?

Thanks a lot, Best Regards Seppeltronics

[ajlittoz]

I am not under Ubuntu, so I can’t give a very accurate answer. Under Fedora with KDE Plasma desktop, the font manager in System Settings offers to install fonts either in user directory or system-wide. The latter option does everything needed, sending the new font into the system directory (/usr/share/fonts in my case) and taking care of file permissions (with a dialog requesting administrator password).