dev-texlive/texlive-fonstrecommended installs various truetype/opentype fonts, but when using `xelatex` these fonts cannot be found... It seems that XeTeX picks up fonts via fontconfig ie when font shows up with `fc-list` it can be used. Here's a small example: % test.tex \documentclass[12pt]{article} \usepackage{fontspec} \usepackage{lipsum} \setmainfont{Dejavu Serif} %% Works % \setmainfont{TeX Gyre Pagella} %% FAILS (from texlive-fontsrecommended) \begin{document} \lipsum \end{document} $ xelatex test.tex
well, texlive-xetex installs the fontconfig conf.d file that will tell fontconfig where to find the font, additionally you have to enable texlive fonts for fontconfig with eselect fontconfig; after doing this, your example works fine here