The GNU/Linux desktop lacks a font manager for design work. Ideally, such a font manager should support currently used font formats, including TrueType, Type1, and OpenType, and allow sets of fonts to be activated on the fly, so that system memory is not choked with rarely used fonts. Until now, the closest to this ideal has been Fonty Python, but, when last seen, it fell short because of it supported only TrueType fonts and had a needlessly complicated interface. Now, however, newcomer Fontmatrix has proved itself a contender for the role. In fact, despite some weaknesses in its features, its basic functionality is already dependable.

Fontmatrix is a font manager for individual user accounts, rather than for the system, like the one in the KDE Control Center. According to Pierre Marchand, Fontmatrix's creator, this decision is deliberate. "System-wide fonts," he says, "are intended to fulfill application needs and must keep in a very stable and predictable state." Design professionals, he says, "need to activate fonts on a per-project basis, without a thought about what the other users of the same system need at the same time."

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