Every-time I have to install a new Debian Linux system I encounter the same troubles with locales -- I do precisely want English system language with standards set to the country where I live, i.e. Germany.
The debian installer
, and probably others, is asking at installation time for your "preferred" language. And every time I choose English. But then, I cannot add the standard locales of my country, because only English speaking countries are shown for the previously chosen language.
It's clear. After installation with enough manual fiddling it's achievable. And there is also a workaround (at least for European-ish users) by using en_IE.UTF-8
or en_DK.UTF-8
described here. However, this doesn't answer the question: Why it is so difficult to combine the preferred English system language with specific locales? I want to understand the reason/s and if there are any risks.
(Why do I want this? Because I can't see any advantage in (partially) traduced messages and software. Even more, it is much harder to find help when researching with English-foreign errors and messages got for the encountered issues.)
My actual configuration, AFAIK it works fine:
$ locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_NAME=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=de_DE.UTF-8
LC_ALL=
sudo locale-gen de_DE.UTF-8
and then logout and login again and tryexport LC_ALL=de_DE.UTF-8
. Does it work? – user996142 Jul 21 '17 at 21:07LC_ALL=...
will "override all other locale variables". This is precisely what I do NOT want. I do want to keep the system language to English (US or UK). – alex Jul 21 '17 at 21:29LC_ALL
overwrites allLC_
but notLANGUAGE
norLANG
. And you can always set it explicitly. I mean you can doexport LANG="en_GB.UTF-8"
– user996142 Jul 21 '17 at 21:35LC_ALL
overwrites everything except some aspects ofLANGUAGE
. In particular, ifLC_ALL
is set,LANG
is ignored. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Jul 21 '17 at 23:13LANG=de_DE.UTF8
. It's due to missing system files which need to be generated withlocale-gen
. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Jul 21 '17 at 23:15raspi-config
where after the installation you can generate and set the required locales.$ locale -a
results in:C C.UTF-8 de_DE.utf8 en_GB.utf8 POSIX
. – alex Jul 22 '17 at 09:02raspi-config
triggerssudo dpkg-reconfigure locales
, I've done that, without errors, and there thegenerate
step is successful -- see FYI attachment after the question. – alex Jul 22 '17 at 09:26