How To Install fc-cat on Ubuntu 21.04

One-liner install command

For those in a hurry, here's a one-line installation command:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt -y install fontconfig

But if you are interested in the detailed steps with descriptions, the following information is for you.

What is fc-cat and what are the ways to install it?

Before beginning this tutorial, you will need access to a server or computer running Ubuntu 21.04. This guide was written specifically with a server running Ubuntu 21.04 in mind, although it should also work on older, supported versions of the operating system.

Also, make sure you are running a regular, non-root user with sudo privileges configured on your server. When you have an account available, log in as your non-root user to begin.

There are several ways to install fc-cat on Ubuntu 21.04. You can use (links are clickable):

In the following sections, we will describe each method in detail. You can choose one of them or refer to the recommended one.

Install fc-cat using apt-get

First, update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt-get database, You can install fc-cat using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install fontconfig

Install fc-cat using apt

Because fc-cat is available in Ubuntu 21.04’s default repositories, it is possible to install it from these repositories using the apt packaging system.

To begin, update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, You can install fc-cat using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install fontconfig

Install fc-cat using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Ubuntu 21.04. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating aptitude database, You can install fc-cat by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install fontconfig

How to upgrade (update) a single package fc-cat using apt-get?

First, you will need to update packages index. Run update command as usual:

sudo apt-get update

Next, to upgrade only the fc-cat, e.g. single package, you should use the following format with the apt-get command/apt command:

sudo apt-get --only-upgrade install fontconfig

Note that this command will not install any new packages! If you wish to install the package if it doesn't exist you may leave out --only-upgrade part.

sudo apt-get install fontconfig

How To Uninstall fc-cat from Ubuntu 21.04

To uninstall only the fc-cat package you can execute the following command:

sudo apt-get remove fontconfig

Uninstall fc-cat and all its dependencies

To uninstall fc-cat and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Ubuntu 21.04, you can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove fontconfig

Remove fc-cat with all configurations and data

To remove fc-cat configuration and data from your system you can run the following purge command:

sudo apt-get -y purge fontconfig

Remove fc-cat completely (configurations, data and all of its dependencies)

And lastly, you can run the next command to remove absolutely everything related to fc-cat package, e.g.: configurations, data and all of its dependencies. Just use this command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge fontconfig

Extra info and code examples

Fontconfig is a font configuration and customization library, which does not depend on the X Window System. It is designed to locate fonts within the system and select them according to requirements specified by applications. Fontconfig is not a rasterization library, nor does it impose a particular rasterization library on the application. The X-specific library 'Xft' uses fontconfig along with freetype to specify and rasterize fonts. This package contains a program to maintain the fontconfig cache (fc-cache), a sample program to list installed fonts (fc-list), a program to test the matching rules (fc-match) and a program to dump the binary cache files in string form (fc-cat). It no longer makes fonts managed by defoma available to fontconfig applications.

Conclusion

You now have a full guide on how to install fc-cat using apt, apt-get and aptitude tools. Also, we showed how to update as a single package and different ways to uninstall the fc-cat from Ubuntu 21.04.

See also: