The Calibri font on Ubuntu

Solution 1:

Multiple issues are described in the question and comments. This answer summarizes them and points toward resources that may be helpful.

1. Possible reasons for 'wrong' fonts being displayed include:

   • Forgetting to update the font cache with fc-cache -f after installing the font.

   • Not having actually installed the font. For instance, by copying files to a wrong location.

2. Metric-Compatible Fonts are fonts that may used in place of each other without changing layout and pagination.

   • The font displayed in Ubuntu is Carlito, which is a substitute for Calibri. It is part of Google's Chrome OS Extra Fonts (Crosextra). The other font in the collection is Caladea, which replaces Cambria.

   • Google has another collection of fonts, Chrome OS Core Fonts (Croscore), which contains Tinos (for Times New Roman), Arimo (for Arial), and Cousine (for Courier New).

   • Some other Google-sponsored substitutes are available, such as Gelasio (for Georgia).

3. Combinations of letters (particularly f, i, t) that are merged together when rendered are known as ligatures. In print, ligatures are considered desirable. However, people are not used to seeing ligatures because their primary exposure to text is now via web browsers, which don't even bother to attempt to follow any of the typographic conventions that have developed over centuries.

   The following pages may be helpful toward finding an acceptable way to avoid ligatures:

   • Is it possible to disable ligatures?

   • How to disable typographic ligature when using font hinting in xfce

   • How can I fix TTF fonts' ligatures (tt, ti, fi, ff, etc) in Firefox?

4. In one of the images, antialiasing appears to have been turned off. Antialiasing improves the appearance of shapes drawn on an imperfectly matched grid. If turning on antialiasing in system settings does not fix the problem, then the problem may be associated with the use of embedded bitmap fonts.