alpie wrote: Sat Mar 29, 2025 6:08 am
Thank you for your extensive assistance! I do not recall exactly what options I had (and changed) during install. Indeed it would be helpful if you could select a language and a region during install, which is used to set all the system wide locales. I think K/Ubuntu takes this approach since I never had to change locales after installation.
The way I have described is for MX Linux not for Kubuntu.
alpie wrote: Sat Mar 29, 2025 6:08 am
I launched "MX Locale". It looks like I have to change 10 categories manually. Say I want language = en_US but all locales set to nl_NL. Is the easiest way to set language to nl_NL, press "Set all locale categories to current language" and then change language to en_US again?
To be clear. Normally a user would have just one locale set by LANG all LC-* locale categories will be set automatically to the same value.
Or with other words, with an example of LC_TIME:
If LC_TIME is unset the value of LANG is used for LC_TIME. And "MX Locale" tool was made with having in mind, that for most users just one value LANG is the usual
settings. So if you want to adjust locale categories (LC_*) settings, you would adjust the one you want to change.
For cases where Debian does not provide a combined locale e.g. like en_NL.UTF-8, which would be something like LANG=en_US with most LC-* categories based on nl_NL.UTF-8, the user can either create it's on locale definition like en_NL, which does not exist in Debian,
or set manually all LC*-categories to nl_NL except LC_MESSAGES so it takes the default from LANG=en_US.UTF-8.
This approach would solve most locale related issues, for a combined en_US and nl_NL locale combo,
but not all:
When LC_MESSAGES have been kept as LANG=en_US.UTF-8, it would make most translation strings be
shown in English. But some translations are not provided with LC_MESSAGES settings, like translation for day and month names.
They are defined directly within LC_TIME definition, so to say hard-coded within the locale definition of LC_TIME.
Which means having LC_TIME set to nl_NL.UTF-8, you would get proper nl_NL formatting,
but also translation strings for day and month would be shown in Dutch not in English.
Also if you want to keep English translation for day and month, but also a NL-date/time format, you may consider using
an English based locale for LC_TIME e.g just C.UTF-8 or en_IE.UTF-8 (Ireland).
But you would need to check which of those do provide a proper NL-formatting of the displayed date/time,
and also begin of week monday or sunday maybe sometimes important.
alpie wrote: Sat Mar 29, 2025 6:08 am
And is there a way to reset user made changes on beforehand, so all locale changes are applied to all users? (I can remove $HOME/.config/plasma-org.kde.plasma.desktop-appletsrc but this file contains more settings than just locales).
For the panel clock: Easiest right click on clock and select "Configuer digital clock"
and set to regional instead of 24h, would do.
All other manual selected user locale settings are set within:
To reset:
Just remove the saved regional settings file:
and logout/login.
Note: There can be an additional "conflict" with those regional plasma locale settings:
E.g. you have chosen en_NL.UTF-8 with KDE/Plasma regional settings for LC_TIME,
you will find within ~/.config/plasma-localerc a line
LC_TIME=en_NL.UTF-8
But b/c there is no source definition of that combo locale en_NL, and as this settings is invalid and it will create further issues.
So better stay away from the troublesome "Regional Settings" within KDE/Plasma and use only "MX Locale" to select locale settings.
For default papersize in case it is set to "letter" size based on en_US, b/c you have chosen en_US at LiveBoot,
do change system-wide to "a4" by changing the content of /etc/papersize e.g with
Code: Select all
echo "a4" | sudo tee /etc/papersize
HTH