Fonts

Portable packages don't include fonts to minimize size. They use fonts from your host system. If fonts are missing, you may see boxes instead of text (tofu), missing emojis, garbled non-Latin characters, or missing icons.

Checking Font Issues

# Check if fontconfig is working
fc-list | head -10

# Check for common fonts
fc-list | grep -i noto
fc-list | grep -i emoji

Installing Fonts

Alpine Linux

apk update
packages="fontconfig font-awesome font-inconsolata font-noto font-terminus font-unifont"
for pkg in $packages; do
  apk add "$pkg"
done
fc-cache --force --verbose
# Log out and back in or reboot

Arch Linux & Derivatives

pacman -Sy
packages="fontconfig noto-fonts otf-font-awesome terminus-font ttf-dejavu ttf-inconsolata-nerd"
for pkg in $packages; do
  pacman -S "$pkg" --noconfirm
done
fc-cache --force --verbose
# Log out and back in or reboot

Debian & Derivatives

sudo apt update
sudo apt install fontconfig fonts-noto
fc-cache --force --verbose
# Log out and back in or reboot

Common Font Packages

Purpose	Packages
General use	fonts-noto, fonts-liberation, ttf-dejavu
Icons/symbols	otf-font-awesome, ttf-nerd-fonts
CJK (Chinese/Japanese/Korean)	fonts-noto-cjk, fonts-wqy-zenhei
Emojis	fonts-noto-color-emoji, ttf-joypixels

Verifying

fc-cache -f -v
fc-list | grep -i noto