Unfortunately, this won't affect users who login with xdm, gdm, etc. This will only set LANG if it was not previously defined, for example by ssh. If you have tcsh or csh users, create a file named /etc/csh/login.d/lang with the following content: if (! $?LANG) setenv LANG de_DE.iso88591 Where de_DE.iso88591 is the locale you want to use as a default. Note that the spellings are different from the ones presented in the dpkg-reconfigure list.Īdd a line like this to your /etc/profile file: : '$' export LANG Run locale -a to get a list of the locale names suitable for use in environment variables. Now, optionally, edit /etc/profile as follows: content in /etc/environment, you should comment it out (type editor /etc/environment and put a # character in front of the line, and then save it). If you've upgraded to Lenny from an older version of Debian and have leftover LANG=. If you chose a default locale other than None above, it will be in /etc/default/locale and will override the LANG variable supplied by ssh.

This changes /etc/default/locale and /etc/locale.gen (in older versions of Debian, also /etc/environment). If you have users who access the system through ssh, it is recommended that you choose None as your default locale. At the end, you'll be asked which one should be the default. Get root and type dpkg-reconfigure locales and select the locale(s) you want to generate. For example, if you do not set LC_ALL and set LANG=en_US.UTF-8, then you should not also set LC_TIME=ja_JP.eucjp because the codepages of the LANG and LC_TIME settings would clash. If you do this, you should override features in a compatible way. If there are specific aspects of your primary locale that you don't like (e.g., date formats), then you can leave LC_ALL unset, set LANG to a default locale, and set specific variables to override those features only. You can set LANG or LC_ALL to your preferred locale. Overrides all other locale variables (except LANGUAGE)Ĭharacter classification and case conversionĭefault measurement system used within the regionįormat of interactive words and responsesĭetermines how responses (such as Yes and No) appear in the local languageĬonventions used for representation of telephone numbers List of fallback message translation languages (GNU only)Ĭonvention used for formatting of street or postal addresses NOTE: Replace 'de_DE.Determines the default locale in the absence of other locale related environment variables add the following to the ~/.profile for the user you wish to change the environment language for:.So if you set the default to none, then you must set a specific language for each individual account separately, as per instructions below. For example, after this, my Gnome terminal wouldn't start anymore. This can cause some apps to not operate properly. NOTE 1: At the end, the wizard recommends setting the default language to None if other people are likely to ssh into this system. select the languages you wish to install.The settings GUI shows the right values, but the desktop environment ignores them. Right now, the account I had tried to change to German is in English, whereas the admin account is in German.

(also tried it without the colon at the beginning, same result) To /etc/profile, but this broke the system so that I could no longer login. For some reason, when I run the dpkg-reconfigure locales, it sets the first value without quotation marks and the second with them (or probably sets only one of them).įollowing the other suggestions on Debian wiki, I tried the ~/.dmrc solution which did not work. If you think the first line is missing quotation marks, I tried all permutations and it didn't change anything. In /etc/default/locale didn't work either. After logout and login the admin account remained German, while the account that I wished to turn to German is back in English.

I also set the relevant fields in the Region and Language section of the Settings GUI. It simply comments out the LANG line in /etc/default/locale. Then as per suggestion on Debian wiki, I ran dpkg-reconfigure locales and set the default to None. I did that and it seemed to work, with the caveat that now my admin account also changed language to German. Somebody suggested that I should edit /etc/default/locale. This is on a non-admin account, but I have access to root.Īlso I notice that on the Login screen, the day is shown in German and months names in Calendar are in German, but most everything else (menus, options, messages, etc.) is in English. The value of Language and Format fields are shown as German but the environment is still in English. After I restart the session, everything is still in English. I set both Language and the Formats to German and Germany respectively in the Region and Language section of Settings GUI.

Set locale debian