Cannot load config file from /etc/fonts/fonts.conf

Upon invoking emacs, it report errrors:

Fontconfig error: "/etc/fonts/conf.d/90-synthetic.conf", line 6: invalid attribute 'version'
Fontconfig error: Cannot load config file from /etc/fonts/fonts.conf

Consult with the answer at Fontconfig error: cannot load default config file.

me@alpha:~:
$ echo $FONTCONFIG_PATH
/etc/fonts

Unfortunately, it still does not work.

How could solve the problem?

2 Answers

If you run the command

dpkg -l | grep fontconfig

I suspect that you find that the listed packages are not of the same version, which they should be. In that case the obvious solution is to update your system to the most recent packages:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

I suppose you are on 18.10, btw. This problem shouldn't show up on 19.04; see this bug report:

I had this same issue and was able to solve it by deleting (moving for safety) the /etc/fonts folder and reinstalling fontconfig

mv /etc/fonts /etc/fonts.bak
sudo apt install fontconfig --reinstall