Why there are no fonts for Japanese, Thai, Arabic etc. in Tumbleweed?
Sure I do not understand those languages, but with squires it looks just awful…
Did you do a search via Myrlyn? All fonts are available…you only need to install them. Search for arabic, japanese, thai. Set your search filters properly.
Or simply search for “fonts” in Myrlyn. You will be surprised. 1074 font packages are available for Tumbleweed.
You can also use zypper
zypper se fonts
The question is: why they are not installed by default? Install Windows and all fint are shown out of the box.
It makes Linux again look as an OS not for normal people… 
Those small touches here and there.
A normal user will not bother to understand which of those thousands of fonts he needs to install… C’mon, that is just not user friendly.
The same question comes every now and then in different shapes and colors: why is package xyz not installed by default.
The reason is: you can’t please all users. Some complain that to much packages are installed by default. Others complain that to less packages are installed by default. It is always wrong what the devs are doing.
3 Likes
Why Windows shows all languages out of the box without installing anything?
If Linux wants to gain user base it should be friendly for normal user, who do not wants to search the internet for solutions for a common use case.
I don’t think a user needing all 1000+ fonts installed is a common use case. If the user can’t figure out which ones they need how would you expect the developers to know what a user needs? I don’t want or need Windows bloat creeping into my install of Linux, thanks.
3 Likes
At system install you have to define a system language and formats.
Then each user might select to accept the system language (default) or add their own via simple desktop tweaks; for instance in Gnome:
Settings > Region & Language
Settings > Keyboard > Input Sources (where you can select more than one, even a different one for each window)
IMHO that is what “normal” users need. I even uninstalled and locked some “default” fonts.
If you like Windows bloat, you are free to stay on that system or install as much bloat as you please in an openSUSE system with a few extra keystrokes.
2 Likes
If I understand Japanese and want open a page I assume to see how it should look like. And I do not want to install any additional fonts or languages.
Look how Fedora handles it out of the box:
@ezh that’s a browser? No issues here, Google Chrome works fine with different languages, nothing to do with installed fonts.
I use Firefox and that from the Netscape Navigator times. And KDE.
You confuse this with “fonts”.
Probably when choosing a system language, at least a font for a script used by that language is installed. But the fonts of other scripts (and yes, as the TO found out, there are many) can be installed. No connection with the system language or other languages installed. Only with those characters one happens to stumble into e.g. on a web site and that one wants to see instead of their place holders.
Thus that @ezh wants to install some more is not that strange. But I also think expecting that by default fonts for all Unicode characters (and maybe even variants of them like serif and sanserif) are all to be installed is not reasonable. They will be seen as bloatware by many. And saying that
will only confirm to most here that Windows is not the system for them. (well, they already knew that)
Thus when you think that Windows does better, then use Windows. It is your choice.
Preparing my trip to Cambodia some years ago. I remember opening some website that showed place holders. I started YaST > Software Management (now Myrlyn), searched for a Khmer font, installed it and simply re-loading the page in Firefox showed the Khmer characters.
That easy
@ezh So I see here google fonts installed of various fonts, so likely a function of the browser install to pull in the respective fonts, the only one manually installed was google-droid-fonts
@ezh, Leap 15.6 used to install more fonts by default. Now, Leap 16.0 is more aligned with Tumbleweed in this aspect and no longer installs a bunch of fonts by default. Can you see how things change from time to time?
I think you can fix this problem with the package: google-noto-sans-cjk-fonts
1 Like
Since on my workhorse I uninstalled and locked several default fonts, I checked in two fresh installs of Tumbleweed and Leap 16.0 finding that:
- Tumbleweed displays Asian fonts in Firefox (checked Korean and Japanese) OOTB
- Leap 16.0 does not
Both have an identical default set of 38 fonts installed and use KDE.
But my “limited” Tumbleweed workhorse with only 23 fonts installed shows Asian pages correctly in Firefox as well; checked Korean and Japanese and using Gnome BTW.
So apparently the difference is elsewhere (Firefox version? Sites sending different versions?) and stating that “there are no fonts for Japanese… in Tumbleweed” is not correct, at least generally speaking and on up to date systems.
The problem shows in a default Leap 16.0 install though.
download and add:
The noto fonts are in the standard repos. It is better to install from there, rather than going to github.
1 Like
Weird, after I installed kate, which brought in 4 dependencies, I can see “exotic” fonts in Leap 16.0 too.
Checked Arab, Hebrew, Greek, Russian, Japanese, Korean (mostly airline sites) and all display in their native scripts in Firefox, Plasma.
The same in Tumbleweed, both Gnome and Plasma.
In Tumbleweed most basic desktop patterns require or recommend droid or noto-cjk/noto-arab fonts which apparently enable most scripts on the planet:
LT-B:~ # zypper se --recommends-pkg droid cjk arab |grep pattern
| patterns-enlightenment-enlightenment | Enlightenment | package
i | patterns-gnome-gnome_basic | GNOME Desktop Environment (Basic) | package
| patterns-lxde-lxde | LXDE Desktop Environment | package
| patterns-lxqt-lxqt | LXQt Desktop Environment | package
| patterns-lxqt-lxqt_wayland | LXQt Desktop Environment | package
| patterns-mate-mate_basis | MATE Base System | package
LT-B:~ # zypper se --requires-pkg droid cjk arab |grep pattern
| patterns-aeon-base | openSUSE Aeon | package
| patterns-kalpa-base | Kalpa Desktop | package
| patterns-microos-desktop-kde | MicroOS KDE Plasma Desktop | package
LT-B:~ #
Notably KDE/Plasma is not in that list, but as reported above something else, possibly noto-sans installed by default, allow Arab, Japanese etc. as well.
So I cannot confirm the Thread title for the usual default installs of Tumbleweed and Leap 16.0.