i've been using computers for a long time now. but never thought how disgusting it can get dealing with fonts. well i did not intend to sound harsh with that statement... but i've been finding it hard to digest anything that revolves around customising/involking/setting fonts. thats because i recently compiled lfs and to get some apps running i had to download and install fonts. i did not what exactly (open source ones i mean) to find for linux. so i downloaded MS fonts and did some mkfontdir and stuff. well those were the instructions i followed and succeeded in running rox-filer. but later i could not set my desired font and its size in xterm.... i believe thats because i do not understand the a-b-c of fonts. i would be greatful if someone can enlighten me on this subject. i only need a working knowledge of dealing with fonts - how to install them, what directories the system normally looks for while searching for fonts (any variable like PATH exists for fonts? ), why use mkfontdir, what are the fonts famous in linux, why/how use xfontsel.
thanks in advance...

I have a bookmark relating to doing this for Debian which I used successfully on my system. I am sure the basics are the same for most systems.