When running "xfontsel", I see the very same error messages: ~> xfontsel Warning: Missing charsets in String to FontSet conversion Warning: Unable to load any usable fontset However it's not that I have no fonts installed: ~> fc-list | wc -l 3308 ~> fc-list | grep -i helveti | wc -l 110 ~> fc-list | grep -i helvetica.*bold | wc -l 50