Linux provides a way to set fonts and keymaps on the virtual consoles
(tty[1-7]). I’ll focus on fonts in this post. The available fonts can be found
in /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts/ and can be set as follows:
If there is a file in /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts/ named
ter-powerline-v18n.psf.gz, you can set it as the terminal font for the current
console by running the following command:
setfont ter-powerline-v18n
Note that this won’t work in a terminal emulator. You might get an error like:
Couldn't get a file descriptor referring to the console.
But the above command sets the font in the current console only and that too
without persistence. To set the font at boot for all consoles, edit (or create)
the file /etc/vconsole.conf and add this line:
# in /etc/vconsole.conf
FONT=ter-powerline-v18n
Now you can either reboot the machine or load the changes without reboot using the command:
localectl set-keymap MAP # where MAP is the locale map (us, uk etc.)
References:
[1] Linux console in Arch Wiki.
[2] Linux console/Keyboard configuration in Arch Wiki.