Summary

On startup of the AWT desktop toolkit on Linux, the /etc/os-release file will be examined to determine naming of font configuration files, replacing previous hard-coded mappings and other mechanisms.

Problem

Since JDK 1.1 font properties files embedded in the JDK have been used to specify a mapping to platform fonts to be used for AWT logical fonts. The naming of the files themselves has historically depended on hard-coded mappings such as "solaris" and "Redhat" which are set depending on whether (eg) there is an /etc/redhat-release file. The result is that only by examination of JDK source can you know what names will be used and how they are discovered.

Solution

For well over 10 years now /etc/os-release has been a standard Linux file in a properties format where a distro will store as "ID" a machine-readable OS name and a machine readable "VERSION_ID". JDK can read these, and does not need to interpret them but can use them directly to replace the existing mechanisms and anyone can determine the names to be used by examining this standard file.

Specification

Use the ID and VERSION_ID fields to determine the name of a font configuration file. Specifically it will be "fontconfig.$ID.$ID_VERSION.properties" Except that if any spaces will be replaced with "_", however this is unlikely, as spaces are expected in these specific fields.