The GNU/Linux desktop lacks a font manager for design work. Ideally, such a font manager should support currently used font formats, including TrueType, Type1, and OpenType, and allow sets of fonts to be activated on the fly, so that system memory is not choked with rarely used fonts. Until now, the closest to this ideal has been Fonty Python. Now, however, newcomer Fontmatrix has proved itself a contender for the role.

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.

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.

The new Ubuntu font ("Ubuntu Font Family") has just been uploaded to the Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat official repositories and was made default for both Ubuntu desktop and netbook as well as Kubuntu. The Ubuntu Font Family has been released as a Libre font, licensed under the Ubuntu Font Licence 1.0.

Hiren has created a nice font called Rufscript based on the handwriting of someone he knows.This font is available under GPLv3 with font exception.

At this year's Google I/O developer conference, Google announced the availability of a collection of high quality open source fonts for the web in the Google Font Directory and the Google Font API

GRUB 2, the next-generation Linux boot loader, has received a new font engine. Version 2 of the GRand Unified Bootloader introduces this new font engine that's written in C and with a font tool in Java. This engine will allow for better internationalization support including non-ASCII character codes and support for multiple fonts.

Have you ever been in a situation where you desperately need a copy of a font for something you’re working on, but you can only seem to find a copy in the wrong format? Often this can happen, and you have the font elsewhere, but it’s not in the standard .ttf format you expect.

After finally getting the bold version last week, the Ubuntu font which will be default in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat is finally available for (almost) everyone. Why almost? Here is an email from the Kubuntu-users mailing list:

Members of the ~kubuntu-users team on launchpad can now test out the Ubuntu Font which is currently in beta testing. Anyone can join this team.