insufficient permission to copy fonts into font folder
 

this is stupid, and ive looked through the forum archives on this one, but since ubuntu runs on sudo and not 'root' i dont know if the only answer i found will help me.

ive tried to muck around with my user permissions and whatnot, and i still cannot add the desired font to the desired (and aptly titled) font folder. what can i do?

The font directory is a system directory rather than user, so you need root permissions to add/remove anything inside of it. "sudo" grants a normal user root permissions temporarily, rather than having to log in as the root user (which is strongly discouraged, and not even enabled in some distributions).

So anything that a forum post or guide says to do as root, just run through sudo.

ok, so how do i get sudo privileges, since no dialog comes up, and i cant just type 'sudo' in the terminal window?

oh, and thanks for putting up with my lack of know how.

You type sudo, and then the command you want to run. So if it is saying to do the following as root:

You would just add sudo like:

It would then be run as root, and you wouldn't have the permission problem. Is there a specific guide you found that you are trying to follow?

ok, so i followed the commands above and i can see it in the folder (along with other fonts i use) and i even added it to the .fonts folder in my home folder, and yet i cant access the font in open office

Copying the fonts into the fonts directory is not enough. You have to rebuild the font cache, to make the system aware a new font has been installed:

i found the fc cache command above on another forum last night, still nothing. i did think that maybe it didnt like me forcing it to be a ttf, considering this was a dfont file from my macbook, but ive tried it in the font viewer(s?) and it seems to be recognized. im getting confused as to why its not showing up.