There are a few things that you can rely on to accumulate on a computer like fluff under a living room couch, and fonts are one of them. If you do any kind of design work, you may be dealing with a huge number of different fonts. It's easy to lose track of the fonts installed on your system, especially since not all programs display a preview of the font in the selection dialog. If you're looking for a specific font but can't remember the name, or if you just want to test different fonts, you would normally have to try out the individual fonts one by one. Using the open source Font Manager [1] program can greatly simplify working with your font collection.

Installation

The current version 0.8.0 of Font Manager comes with numerous innovations, which I will discuss in the course of this article. The best approach is to install the latest version if possible. The developers offer pre-built package sources for Fedora and Ubuntu (Listing 1), as well as a cross-distribution Flatpak. Arch Linux users will find the program in the Arch User Repository. The project provides up-to-date information on the install on its GitHub page, as well as a build guide for users who want to compile the program themselves.

When launched, Font Manager comes up with an easy to navigate window (Figure 1). At the top of the right column, the program shows you all the fonts installed on your system. You can use the down arrow to unfold the supported font styles (standard, italic, bold, etc.). Below that, Font Manager displays a preview of the currently selected font in different sizes, in what is known as a waterfall.

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