Finally got to see every symbol on Twitter with Arch!

Linux is great, Arch is even greater. But when it comes to fonts both are… highly improvable.

I’ve been struggling for hours to be able to see all the stupid symbols people use on Twitter these days. Not that I’m very interested on checking out how people are expressing their desperate need to feel special but I just can’t stand something not working.

So, for those of you archers who think that in 2020 we all should be able to see a webpage without ugly error squares, this is the recipe:

• Install an emoji font (noto-fonts-emoji, ttf-joypixels or any other)
• Install a japanese-chinese-and-the-like font (noto-fonts-cjk, for instance)
• Install the gnu-free-fonts packages for the rest of fancy letters and symbols all over the world
• Edit your .config/fontconfig/fonts.conf and insert something like this (change the first font for the one you use, the only relevant font for the purposes of this article is the second one):

<fontconfig>
  <alias>
    <family>serif</family>
    <prefer>
      <family>IBM Plex Serif</family>
      <family>Joy Pixels</family>
    </prefer>
  </alias>
  <alias>
    <family>sans-serif</family>
    <prefer>
      <family>IBM Plex Sans</family>
      <family>Joy Pixels</family>
    </prefer>
  </alias>
  <alias>
    <family>sans</family>
    <prefer>
      <family>IBM Plex Sans</family>
      <family>Joy Pixels</family>
    </prefer>
  </alias>
  <alias>
    <family>monospace</family>
    <prefer>
      <family>JetBrainsMono Nerd Font</family>
      <family>Joy Pixels</family>
    </prefer>
  </alias>
</fontconfig>

Sorry for the possible mistakes in my English, it isn’t my first language (nor my 2nd, for that matter). Enjoy.