this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2026
9 points (84.6% liked)

Linux

61136 readers
994 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
nooter692@lemmy.ml
AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.ml
MarcellusDrum@lemmy.ml
cypherpunks@lemmy.ml
cyclohexane@lemmy.ml
d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz
9
A modern and simple font (pre)viewing application seems to be an impossible thing … (lemmy.ml)
submitted 7 hours ago by Dirk@lemmy.ml to c/linux@lemmy.ml
6 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

So, yeah, basically the title …

I am in search for a good and simple and modern font viewing application. But there seems to be nothing that matches my criteria.

  • The software needs to be independent from any desktop environment, because I don’;t use one and i am not willing to install what feels like hundreds of specific dependencies

  • The software also should not be a font manager, I can manage my fonts absolutely fine by my own.

  • The software also does not need any features to view “installed and uninstalled” fonts (a term I come across – whatever that means), just give it a file name as parameter and view that font in the GUI.

  • The software should not be dead (i.e. last upstream change over a decade ago, using a dead graphics toolkit, not working on Wayland, etc.).

But either I forgot how to search the web or there seems to be no such application. All I wound was either decades old, dead software, or overly complicated and complex font managers or modules for the two common desktop environments.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks in advance :)

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 7 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

These types of apps became fairly irrelevant with the advent of Web Fonts and sites that already do all of this.

There's Fontbase, Gnome's Font Manager, KDE's Font Viewer and FontForge that are still maintained.

The fact that you're asking for whatever tool to not use something like QT or GTK is asking for the moon here. These types of applications you describe are generally packaged with a DE for this very use. I don't think there's a real use-case for someone to develop this independent of any DE, honestly. That's what they're most useful for.

[–] Dirk@lemmy.ml 0 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

These types of apps became fairly irrelevant with the advent of Web Fonts and sites that already do all of this.

That’s my point. All of those stupid modern things do not solve my issue of just double-clicking a local ttf file in my file manager to see some text rendered in that font. That is literally all I want to do.

The fact that you’re asking for whatever tool to not use something like QT or GTK

I don’t really care what graphics toolkit is used. I just don’t want something that is heavily interconnected with any type of desktop environment due to not wanting to install a metric shit-ton of dependencies 😉