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Ubuntu ttf-mscorefonts-installer fails

10 Jul 2017 - by 'Maurits van der Schee'

You may download Microsoft's TrueType core fonts for free, even on Ubuntu. They are available in a packaged named ttf-mscorefonts-installer. But it is really annoying that when you try to install ttf-mscorefonts-installer it keeps failing with strange error messages like:

W: Can't drop privileges for downloading as file '/var/lib/update-notifier/package-data-downloads/partial/andale32.exe' couldn't be accessed by user '_apt'.

or:

E: Failed to fetch https ://heanet.dl.sourceforge.net/project/corefonts/the fonts/final/andale32.exe Protocol "http" not supported or disabled in libcurl

Fortunately there is a simple workaround as there is some problem that is actually fixed in the corresponding Debian package:

sudo apt-get -y remove --purge ttf-mscorefonts-installer
wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/contrib/m/msttcorefonts/ttf-mscorefonts-installer_3.6_all.deb -P ~/Downloads
sudo apt install ~/Downloads/ttf-mscorefonts-installer_3.6_all.deb

Hopefully this post will also help you find the solution to this annoying problem. Enjoy!


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