With the new fontconfig 2.3.91 (CVS snapshot from 20051007): mfabian@magellan:~/.fonts$ fc-cache -V fontconfig version 2.3.91 mfabian@magellan:~/.fonts$ time fc-cache -f -v . fc-cache: ".": caching, 71 fonts, 1 dirs fc-cache: "./kde-override": caching, 0 fonts, 0 dirs fc-cache: succeeded real 0m24.659s user 0m10.693s sys 0m0.172s mfabian@magellan:~/.fonts$ time fc-cache -v . fc-cache: ".": skipping, 71 fonts, 1 dirs fc-cache: "./kde-override": skipping, 0 fonts, 0 dirs fc-cache: succeeded real 0m14.288s user 0m10.585s sys 0m0.096s mfabian@magellan:~/.fonts$ I.e. the second run of fc-cache in the ~/.fonts directory not even twice as fast as the first run. If all cache files are already up to date, fc-cache should run very fast, but with the new version of fontconfig it is always very slow. This was much better with older versions of fontconfig which didn't yet have the mmap feature: mfabian@rossini:~/.fonts$ fc-cache -V fontconfig version 2.3.2 mfabian@rossini:~/.fonts$ time fc-cache -f -v . fc-cache: ".": caching, 71 fonts, 1 dirs fc-cache: "./kde-override": caching, 0 fonts, 0 dirs fc-cache: succeeded real 0m12.328s user 0m10.133s sys 0m0.104s mfabian@rossini:~/.fonts$ time fc-cache -v . fc-cache: ".": skipping, 71 fonts, 1 dirs fc-cache: "./kde-override": caching, 0 fonts, 0 dirs fc-cache: succeeded real 0m2.023s user 0m0.016s sys 0m0.000s mfabian@rossini:~/.fonts$ I.e. the second run is much faster here. -- Mike FABIAN <mfabian@xxxxxxx> http://www.suse.de/~mfabian ?????????????