I'm running Ubuntu 14 and Inkscape 0.48. I can't seem to figure out how to select a different style or font within a chosen typeface family. In Corel Draw, for instane, there would be a little arrow next to the typeface with font style popping up next to it when you move your cursor over it. I have checked that the different font families are installed. What am I missing here?

Does this help you?

With font style you mean bold/italic etc. If the font comes with these options you can chose that in the Font dialogue box.

To clarify, I wasn't referring to the standard Bold, Italic, Bold/Italic settings. Most typefaces have different variants, such as light, regular, medium, bold, extra bold, condensed, extended, etc.

Do your font families work in other programs? Open Office f.i.?

Inkscape 0.48x doesn't support that. But the new stable 0.91 does. You can see in Janne's screenshot, which is of 0.91.