Will someone tell me how to remove unwanted fonts from Linux Mint laptop?
Please don't flame this request with "... Mint forums ..." as I'm seeking help from LQ because I get working answers here.

Is there some way to prevent an install of a fonts landfill during a fresh distro install? (I'm about to do that with Mint 19.xx)

I don't want to spend the disk space on my laptop for fonts I'll never need.
I've tried to clear things away, but then I get complaints from apps and utilities that <font ident> is missing.

I understand the need for BOLD, ITALIC, BOLD+ITALIC, SERIF, SANS-SERIF and similar variants of a given font, but I have no need for a large number of fonts with similar characteristics -- "looks like <other font name>", etc.

I understand that there are X11 fonts and there are LibreOffice fonts and lastly "true type" fonts. It appears that each has its own tools for install and remove and activation.

I have no need of any language that are not English, French, German, Spanish other European, Russian or Greek. If and when I need Japanese or Korean or Chinese, I'll add those.

Thanks in advance,
~~~ 0;-Dan

I do not know what fonts it installs, but you could find a way to find out using the apt-get if that is what it uses to see what fonts are installed, then apt-get remove the unwanted ones, then update your font cache.

Surgically pick through them and uninstall the unwanted fonts after the distro install is finished? The only other thing I can think of, is using a network install disk and assemble your install from the ground up. Linux Mint is intentionally pretty to make Windows converts feel more at home (directory pun not intended). I've used Synaptic (Debian based package manager) for years (you may have to install it in Mint), which has good search options to filter out the packages you want to remove (in a "name only" search, use terms like "font" and "TTF", etc). One more tip, in Synaptic, mark the unwanted packages "complete removal". Other than that, you have me stumped.

PlanA

First hit from here is
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=3545 and says "The way to remove all these fonts is to use the Synaptic Package Manager. Click on Search and type in fonts."
and discusses the same concern/preference

PlanB

https://help.ubuntu.com/community is the first place you should look wrt""Mint (Not "LMDE"/whatevs either)

PlanC

How much room can fonts possibly take up on a Mint box/box of Mint? I've never used it so I honestly don't know.

I save several fonts for use with GIMP and unzip them directly into the /usr/local/share/fonts directory of my FreeBSD box after the build. It's currently at 57.6 MB, 4771 files and 21 sub-folders total. I just changed my computer font system-wide to Courier 10 for symmetry of text. They might come in handy some day.

If space is at a premium I'd start looking at what programs were installed I could do without. That and any movies, images, documents, etc. you could live without, or store on a USB stick, if you haven't already.

A long time ago, I heard that a lot of fonts not only take up space on the hard drive, but also system resources (more cache in RAM? more cpu cycles to find the appropriate fonts?). It makes sense, because fontconfig settings take effect immediately, which would imply that every choice is made on the fly, from all the files found in the system (both fontconfig files and actual fonts).

well after a while you will realise that a binary distro is limited in many ways.

gentoo has the linguas thing where you can set the "installable" languages.

Also getting rid of unwanted stuff, gentoo is the choice

There are bigger software which has lots of lint like any gnome / kde based software. And also the webkit disease

--

baobab to find the space wasted spots
like junk which google chrome and firefox stores

--

points at kde gentoo team (lazy guys) => I've tried to clear things away, but then I get complaints from apps and utilities that <font ident> is missing.

IT makes a difference for backup size and speed.
It makes a difference if a 120GB SSD is big enough or not.

Sadly so many guys think like you. e.g. gentoo developers, gnome coders, kde coders.

I think binary distro guys do not have much knowledge.

But when I watch the gentoo portage output, i see a lot of junk: several pacakges pull in their own icons in different sizes, and other junk. manpages. gentoo can not even uninstall manpages: the package manager instantly complains.

best excample k3b on gentoo. i made several bugs: report upstream. guess what the bug from 5 years ago is still in current k3b from git. it depends on so many junk, when i unmerge it, it still works flawless. typical behaviour of: we do not care for disk space, regardless if it makes sense or not.no one knowns what a package really depends on, so they make big meta packages. or just pull in everything.

Another objection to multiple fonts is that they make changing fonts in a word-processor fiddly, as you have to scroll through an endless list of fonts for every language in southern Asia…

I've purged masses of fonts from Xubuntu. Use Synaptic, as it will warn you if some application is set on using a font package you've marked for removal. Ubuntu is very keen on Noto fonts and you can't remove the package or it breaks the desktop. In that case, you can still remove individual fonts by just deleting their files. The desktop may want Noto sans, serif, and mono, but it's unlikely to panic at the loss of Kannada or Thai — unless one of those is your locale, of course!

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Yes, I don't know how I ever got by with 57 MB of fonts on a 100 GB HDD.

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Apply the KISS principle. Get the fonts set the way you want them. Then tar /usr/share/fonts directory tree and save that file either externally or to a small partition that will not be touched otherwise. Obviously you need to keep that file current with any subsequent changes you make to the fonts. When you install a new system or need to reinstall your fonts for any reason either delete the /usr/share/fonts tree and replace it with the untarred saved tree or untar the tree somewhere temporary and rsync -av --delete the saved to the currently installed. Of course you should backup the font tree you are replacing before you do anything though or you are guaranteed to meet Murphy.

You can run into problems, of course, if the new system does something funny with fonts or includes new software that absolutely must have some special font or it won't run but I would guess the chances of that are not high and can be dealt with without a whole lot of trouble. I do this successfully quite frequently. If at first you don't succeed get a bigger hammer.

unfortunately, quite a few packages pull in fonts as dependencies, so a trick like that ^ would break pretty soon.

i attempted a reduction of fonts, but soon realised that some have to remain even though i never use them.
sucks, but like trihexagonal said, the hd space is really negligible.

i'd still like to hear some opinion or hard info on what i wrote in post #6?

I totally agree, personally, I love fonts, but you are right, more fonts, more consumed system resources, that's been my experience. I build machines that can handle heavy loads, and still have some leftover resource overhead, so no skin off my rear.