[SOLVED] How to remove fonts unrelated to the OS language?

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Eucalyptus

[SOLVED] How to remove fonts unrelated to the OS language?

Post by Eucalyptus »

Using LinuxMint Cinnamon 18.3, kernel 4.10.0-42, language selected during OS installation = English

Whenever there is a selection of fonts, the list of available fonts is huge. 90% of the fonts are for foreign languages.

I don't remember what I did to install these fonts. May be they came with some software when I added through software center. Can you please show me how to uninstall the un-needed fonts?

Thanks in advance

Maybe this is an acceptable solution. Disable the unwanted fonts using Font Manager as suggested by Cosmo (and avoid reboot by catweazel)
Last edited by Eucalyptus on Sat Dec 09, 2017 6:47 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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thx-1138
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Re: How to remove fonts unrelated to the OS language?

Post by thx-1138 »

...you can find and remove foreign language fonts from either Software Manager or alternatively from Synaptic (Package Manager). A quick'n'dirty method would be to run this on a terminal:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get remove fonts-kacst fonts-kacst-one fonts-khmeros-core fonts-lklug-sinhala fonts-guru fonts-nanum fonts-noto-cjk fonts-takao-pgothic fonts-tibetan-machine fonts-guru-extra fonts-lao fonts-sil-padauk fonts-sil-abyssinica fonts-tlwg-* fonts-lohit-* fonts-beng fonts-beng-extra fonts-gargi fonts-gubbi fonts-gujr fonts-gujr-extra fonts-kalapi fonts-lohit-gujr fonts-samyak-* fonts-navilu fonts-nakula fonts-orya-extra fonts-pagul fonts-sahadeva fonts-sarai fonts-smc fonts-telu-extra fonts-wqy-microhei
It should get rid most of the non-latin fonts, if not all...
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Re: How to remove fonts unrelated to the OS language?

Post by Pjotr »

Better not remove any fonts that came with the default installation of Mint. They're expected to be present and might be used in unexpected circumstances. What's to gain by removing fonts anyway? :wink:
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Re: How to remove fonts unrelated to the OS language?

Post by Cosmo. »

The endless list of useless fonts (e. g. east-Asian for western Europeans or Americans) is really annoying, if you want to the switch the font e. g. in Writer and want only to see the fonts, which do really make sense for you. A more secure way to get rid of them is disabling them instead of removing them, so that you can easily check, what has been disabled, and revert in case, something goes wrong. Disabling fonts can e. g. be done with the font-manager.
Eucalyptus

Re: How to remove fonts unrelated to the OS language?

Post by Eucalyptus »

Pjotr wrote:Better not remove any fonts that came with the default installation of Mint. They're expected to be present and might be used in unexpected circumstances. What's to gain by removing fonts anyway? :wink:
In some applications, where you need to configure your preferred font. For example, try to change the display font in your terminal (please try it!). The list of fonts which is displayed is very long and most of them are not useful (I can't read Tibetan or Khmer languages). With some patience I can still find the font I need. If an application or system stops working because of a not-needed font is missing, well I guess that the developer better needs to focus on learning how to program rather than playing around with fonts.

The rational of my question was rather:

- Why fonts outside of my choice of OS language are installed?

- I can appreciate that maybe it's better to install all fonts in the world. But then who is the person who decided an arbitrary list of languages to install? For example, Hieroglyph, New-Papua-Guinea, Native Americans, Sign languages, etc. are missing. For your enjoyment, do you know that you are missing most of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_l ... ing_system
Last edited by Eucalyptus on Sat Dec 09, 2017 6:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Eucalyptus

Re: How to remove fonts unrelated to the OS language?

Post by Eucalyptus »

thx-1138 wrote:...you can find and remove foreign language fonts from either Software Manager or alternatively from Synaptic (Package Manager). A quick'n'dirty method would be to run this on a terminal:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get remove fonts-kacst fonts-kacst-one fonts-khmeros-core fonts-lklug-sinhala fonts-guru fonts-nanum fonts-noto-cjk fonts-takao-pgothic fonts-tibetan-machine fonts-guru-extra fonts-lao fonts-sil-padauk fonts-sil-abyssinica fonts-tlwg-* fonts-lohit-* fonts-beng fonts-beng-extra fonts-gargi fonts-gubbi fonts-gujr fonts-gujr-extra fonts-kalapi fonts-lohit-gujr fonts-samyak-* fonts-navilu fonts-nakula fonts-orya-extra fonts-pagul fonts-sahadeva fonts-sarai fonts-smc fonts-telu-extra fonts-wqy-microhei
It should get rid most of the non-latin fonts, if not all...
Oh wow, that's a good trick. Is there a way to get the list of the installed fonts?
Saw that fc-list can do the trick as shown in this article Quickly list all available fonts. Not sure if it's the only way. If you have better trick, please share. Thanks
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Re: How to remove fonts unrelated to the OS language?

Post by catweazel »

Eucalyptus wrote:
thx-1138 wrote:Oh wow, that's a good trick.
Not quite good enough though. The font cache should be rebuilt after removing all those fonts:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig
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Eucalyptus

Re: How to remove fonts unrelated to the OS language?

Post by Eucalyptus »

catweazel wrote: Not quite good enough though. The font cache should be rebuilt after removing all those fonts:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig
Super cool, this avoids a reboot. Overall, the low-tech solution is good enough (disabling fonts using Font Manager). I have updated my original post to include the answers. Thanks.
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Re: How to remove fonts unrelated to the OS language?

Post by catweazel »

Eucalyptus wrote:Thanks.
You're most welcome.
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Re: [SOLVED] How to remove fonts unrelated to the OS language?

Post by thx-1138 »

Saw that fc-list can do the trick as shown in this article Quickly list all available fonts. Not sure if it's the only way. If you have better trick, please share. Thanks
Not a 'better' trick, as it doesn't give you the name of the each & every 'individual' font installed, but a simple way of getting the names of the installed packages responsible for the fonts available in your system...

Code: Select all

dpkg -l | grep fonts
You can then feed the names of the unwanted non-latin font packages in apt-get remove...
Not quite good enough though. The font cache should be rebuilt after removing all those fonts:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig
I won't argue with that - however (without wanting to sound pedantic), i believe that nowadays fc-cache is run automatically 30 seconds after uninstalling a font from the system. Meaning, no reboot required. But yes, manually ensuring that the font cache is rebuilt is certainly recommended and for sure doesn't hurt...
LarryTheLamb

Re: [SOLVED] How to remove fonts unrelated to the OS language?

Post by LarryTheLamb »

You might want to include "fonts-smc-*" to the list.
I don't know if it is mint 19 specific but it is in my build for some reason.

Larry
Last edited by LarryTheLamb on Sun Aug 19, 2018 6:26 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: [SOLVED] How to remove fonts unrelated to the OS language?

Post by catweazel »

LarryTheLamb wrote: Sun Aug 19, 2018 6:23 am You might want to include "fonts-smc-*" to the list.

Larry
Please read the forum rules. Don't necrobump old threads.
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Re: [SOLVED] How to remove fonts unrelated to the OS language?

Post by LarryTheLamb »

OK, I did not know this rule. However, it is not that old and is one of the first answers spat out by the search engine so I figured it might help others looking for this advice.
If you don't want people to "necrobump" you should automatically close and archive what you consider old threads not princess about people using the system as it is designed to be used!

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Re: [SOLVED] How to remove fonts unrelated to the OS language?

Post by n0body_special »

I found this thread really useful, I doubt I would have without it having been bumped
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Re: How to remove fonts unrelated to the OS language?

Post by pg11 »

thx-1138 wrote: Sat Dec 09, 2017 1:49 pm ...you can find and remove foreign language fonts from either Software Manager or alternatively from Synaptic (Package Manager). A quick'n'dirty method would be to run this on a terminal:

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get remove fonts-kacst fonts-kacst-one fonts-khmeros-core fonts-lklug-sinhala fonts-guru fonts-nanum fonts-noto-cjk fonts-takao-pgothic fonts-tibetan-machine fonts-guru-extra fonts-lao fonts-sil-padauk fonts-sil-abyssinica fonts-tlwg-* fonts-lohit-* fonts-beng fonts-beng-extra fonts-gargi fonts-gubbi fonts-gujr fonts-gujr-extra fonts-kalapi fonts-lohit-gujr fonts-samyak-* fonts-navilu fonts-nakula fonts-orya-extra fonts-pagul fonts-sahadeva fonts-sarai fonts-smc fonts-telu-extra fonts-wqy-microhei
It should get rid most of the non-latin fonts, if not all...
Thanks! It is very helpful.
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