Experienced this issue on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and loading fonts using libpango 1.38. Error message simply indicated segfault.
Found this URL: https://docs.gimp.org/en/font-problems.html ...indicating that an upgrade to pango 1.4 would correct the issue. Found this URL: http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=libpango Indicating that 1.4 was available in Ubuntu 16.10. Upgraded my machine. Started Gimp, still crashed. ::discouraged:: I reviewed the kern.log, found a better error message from libpango indicating the offending font! Removed corrupted font file, Gimp works without issues. Suggestion: Can libpango and/or gimp gracefully fail over broken font files? Even better, show an error that it could not load a specific font? -- Kind regards, Jordan Michaels Vivio Technologies