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In Xorg fontconfig, there're (at least) two fontcaches, by default /var/cache/fontconfig and ~/.fontconfig, defined in /etc/fonts/fonts.conf.

Q1. But what's the rationale? Only one, the system wide one suffices, no? In my case, there're 69 files in ~/.fontconfig, and 24 of them have identical copies also in /var/cache/fontconfig.

Q2. Is it possible to get rid of ~/.fontconfig? /etc/fonts/fonts.conf is not for writing your personal configuration.

(Q3. Why does X do all as the user root? It should be user X, right? Caches are made by root!)

Thanks in advance.

1 Answer 1

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Because users can install their own fonts and their own configuration in other directories and don't have permission to write caches for them to the system /var/cache directory.

(fontconfig isn't actually part of X, but a system that sits alongside X to replace the X11 font system with a more modern one that many modern desktop programs use instead of X fonts.)

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  • Probably you're right, but all caches in my ~/.fontconfig are for fonts in /usr/share/fonts. This design does not seem reasonable at all. (Many duplicates will exist if there're many users.) Jan 3, 2013 at 4:11
  • You should only end up with caches in ~/.fontconfig for system fonts when the system font caches for those fonts are missing or out-of-date.
    – alanc
    Jan 5, 2013 at 4:29

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