I read a blog post recently outlining how to install the ttf-droid package — Android Fonts — on Ubuntu.  Because I’m using Arch Linux on my two machines at work I decided to look into the possibility of installing them on that platform.  Turns out, thankfully, the ttf-droid package is available in the Arch User Repository.  I’ve now switched both of my office machines to this new font set and I really enjoy it.  It has a very clean, crisp look.  It’s not boxy or thick like a lot of other fonts I’ve seen used (I’m looking at you, Fedora).

Here are the instructions on installing the ttf-droid fonts on your Arch Linux machine:

Yet Another User Repository Tool (yaourt)

If you are using the unfortunately named yaourt package management frontend you can install directly from the AUR using the command:

yaourt -S ttf-droid

If you are simply using pacman you’ll need to grab the PKGBUILD from the AUR and manually install.  No worries if you’ve never used the AUR before.  It’s really pretty simple.

Manual Install from AUR

Download the ttf-droid tarball

Unpack: tar xf ttf-droid*.tar.gz

cd ttf-droid

makepkg -i