For the obvious reason most UNIX and UNIX like operating systems dont come with Micro$oft fonts installed. And for some strange reason websites (just like this one) tend to use Micro$oft fonts as thier base font setting (this site also takes into consideration people who dont have webfonts installed on thier UNIX system).
FreeBSD has a package in its ports known as webfonts which installs the most popular Micro$oft based webfonts so when you use a web browser in FreeBSD to surf the web you get the full effect of that particular website. This particular webfonts package is taken from the freebsd ported package.
I have tested this webfont package on FreeBSD (obviously because its based on the port), OpenBSD and I will go as far to say NetBSD and Slackware Linux. If you have read through the Redhat webfonts section on this site you will have noticed that Redhat uses the X font server, the before mentioned all dont use the X font server (I would say this is due to security reasons), so you can kind of get the drift of what the main difference is between getting webfonts to work on these systems are.
InstallationDownload the following file:
Webfonts-nix.tar.gz (currently not linked)
Size: 3,429KB
MD5 = 4e9ff6cfc400c2b127f4da9116df3cbb
Released: 02 03 2003
First thing you must do is find the fonts directory. you can cheat here if you like by viewing the XF86Config file and looking for the font directories in there. On my system the font directory is /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/.
Copy the webfonts file you downloaded to the fonts directory and change directories to it, cp webfonts-nix.tar.gz /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/ && cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/
Then untar the webfonts file tar -vzxf webfonts-nix.tar.gz, this will create the webfonts directory and all the files needed within it.
Next you must edit the XF86Config file, two lines must be added:
Under the files section add: FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/webfonts/"
And under the module section add: Load "freetype"
Alternatively if you use FreeBSD you can load the webfonts port which is located in /usr/ports/x11-fonts/webfonts - though you still have to add the above two lines in the XF86Config file.
Thats it, all you have to do now is restart X and you will be able to use your Micro$oft webfonts!