The upcoming Fedora release 36 (due end of April 2022) and beyond, and ELN (Enterprise Linux Next, what would become RHEL) will have default Malayalam script fonts as RIT Rachana and Meera New fonts. In addition, Sundar, TNJoy, Panmana and Ezhuthu fonts are now available in the official repositories. This brings Malayalam fonts that are modern (Unicode 13 compatible), well-maintained, having perfect complex-script shaping and good metadata to the users of Fedora, RHEL, CentOS & downstream OSen. I have made all the necessary updates in the upstream projects (which I maintain) and packaged them for Fedora (which also I maintain).
Update: thanks to Norbert Preining, all these fonts are also available for ArchLinux!
RIT Rachana and Meera New fonts will be default serif and sans-serif fonts for Malayalam. smc-rachana-fonts and smc-meera-fonts are deprecated as they are unmaintained.
All the fonts can be installed from your favourite package managers (GNOME Software, Discover, dnf etc.).
The packages can be installed using dnf via:
sudo dnf install -y rit-*-fonts
This change in Fedora required many well orchestrated steps:
- Packaging & building RIT fonts according to latest font packaging guidelines
- Set as default serif/sans-serif fonts for Malayalam in
langpacks - Set as default serif/sans-serif fonts for Malayalam in
fedora-comps - Propose the ChangeRequest which is then discussed & approved by Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCO).
I would like to especially thank Parage Nemade for coordinating all the changes and relevant engineering procedures, and Pravin Satpute for initial discussions; in helping to complete these updates in time for Fedora 36.
Soliloquies 