Install Terminus font on Ulyssa

[bikergeek]

Those of us who spend a lot of time using applications in a Terminal (vi(m), emacs, mutt, pine, ssh, irssi, whatever else) know the value of a readable, easy-on-the-eyes, monospaced terminal font. Ubuntu and its derivatives like Mint all come with several good ones, but by far, my favorite is called Terminus.

Mint offers a TrueType version of Terminus, with the fonts-terminus package, but it looks awful and nothing like how Terminus is supposed to look. Ulyssa also offers the bitmapped version of Terminus, xfonts-terminus, but it's not usable because bitmapped fonts are disabled by default.

You could turn bitmapped fonts on, by making the appropriate changes in /etc/fonts/conf.d/, but then other apps will use them and will look kinda bad. Firefox in particular looks awful.

So what we need to do is to download the Terminus font source, compile it into .otb files, install the .otb files, and then enable just this one font.

First uninstall all prepackaged versions of Terminus.

Download the gzipped tar file from the link on the Terminus home page that says "Unix/Linux source" (the link target will change with subsequent revisions/releases of the font). Then compile and install the font:

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tar -xzvf terminus-font-4.49.1.tar.gz 
cd terminus-font-4.49.1/
./configure --prefix=/usr/share/fonts/ --otbdir=/usr/share/fonts/terminus
make clean
make otb
sudo make install-otb

This will install the font files in /usr/share/fonts/terminus/. However we are not ready to use Terminus yet. We need to enable it. Go to the/etc/fonts/conf.avail/ directory and:

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cd /etc/fonts/conf.avail/

Then we need to create the file. I use here vi because it's what I'm used to, but feel free to use whatever editor you prefer, pico or whatever else.

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sudo vi 71-enable-terminus.conf

Into this file, put:

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<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
  <selectfont>
    <acceptfont>
      <pattern>
        <patelt name="family"><string>terminus</string></patelt>
        <patelt name="fontformat"><string>TrueType</string></patelt>
      </pattern>
    </acceptfont>
  </selectfont>
</fontconfig>

and

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:wq

to save the file and quit vi. Then

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cd ../conf.d

and

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sudo ln -s ../conf.avail/71-enable-terminus.conf .

(that final period is part of the command, it doesn't end the sentence!).

The Terminus font is now available to your X applications. (You may have to log out and back in.)

The contents of the file "71-enable-terminus.conf" are taken from the current release of Ubuntu Hirsute Hippo; they've managed to get this to work, and I imagine this will be fixed in some future release of Mint that relies on a later release of Ubuntu.

[Rademes]

Wow! Big Thank You for providing detailed instructions, how to install (compile) and enable this Great font in Linux Mint!
I was using Linux Q4OS previously, and after switching to Linux Mint 20.3 Una, I was very disappointed, that even after installing the xfonts-terminus package using Synaptic package manager, the Terminus font did not worked for me.
Now, following your instructions, I was able to install it in my Linux Mint 20.3 Una! As for me, Terminus font is the best font for terminals.
I wonder, why it is not included in distro by default.
Here is the screenshot, how it looks like in Xfce Terminal:

Very beautiful, isn't it?