I see a lot of traffic come to my site looking for typefaces which are part of Microsoft's Core Fonts package. In 1996 Microsoft started offering certain fonts free for all users, in what became known as the Web Fontpack or TrueType Core Fonts for the Web. This was a great service for the internet in general, as it allowed for a richer diversity of fonts to be installed on end?user's computers than before. However what with one hand Microsoft giveth, with the other they taketh away, and duly in 2002 Microsoft withdrew distribution of their TrueType font package. Notwithstanding this setback, the license and FAQ documents allow the fonts to be distributed by third parties as long as they remain in an unmodified form.
To do my bit for the web and those people who come to my site looking for font downloads, I am listing below links that will allow Windows and Mac users to obtain the fonts themselves. If Mac OS X users wish to install the Windows versions of the fonts (which are different), they can use the command line tool cabextract, which is available via Fink. I will not provide instructions for using cabextract, and the Windows fonts won't work on Mac OS 9 without first running them through a tool like TTConverter. For the purposes of completeness I also provide the names of fonts by German typography house URW++, which were released as part of the GhostScript project and very closely resemble their corresponding Monotype & Linotype designs. Linux users are referred to the corefonts sourceforge project and msttcorefonts debian package, or the corresponding GhostScript fonts as listed below.
500 Top Web Fonts for Free
I just found a website with the top 500 web fonts available for free download (warning, 25.7 MB file!). There's also a cute picture of a hamster :o) — Nicholas, 12 April 2007
Free Professional TrueType Font Package
Everybody should also download these free fonts from Apple. The set includes typefaces from 23 different families of text font and one face from an ornament font. Note that these are for Mac users, they will not work with Windows or Linux unless you first convert them with a third‐party tool.
If you have them installed, you will see them shown in this list. If not, they will appear in your default browser font.
Update: I have just discovered that there are a whole bunch of free fonts included with iDVD too. If you have iDVD installed, control-click on it and choose Show Package Contents, then open Contents, Resources and finally Fonts. Double-click on each to install.