Arch Linux

kentkentkent

Member

Registered: 2015-09-22

Posts: 12

[Solved] Unable to change system language

Hello Arch Forums!

After installing Arch early this year I changed my system language to German via Gnome's settings panel. I tried to change it English today. After rebooting, Gnome said my system is in "Englisch", but everything is still in German.

I followed "Setting the Locale" on the wiki, but when I enter

sudo locale

I still get

LANG=de_DE.utf8
LC_CTYPE="de_DE.utf8"
LC_NUMERIC="de_DE.utf8"
LC_TIME="de_DE.utf8"
LC_COLLATE="de_DE.utf8"
LC_MONETARY="de_DE.utf8"
LC_MESSAGES=de_DE.utf8
LC_PAPER="de_DE.utf8"
LC_NAME="de_DE.utf8"
LC_ADDRESS="de_DE.utf8"
LC_TELEPHONE="de_DE.utf8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="de_DE.utf8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="de_DE.utf8"
LC_ALL=

First I entered

sudo localectl set-locale LANG=en_US.UTF-8

, but my locale didn't change. I edited I /etc/locale.conf manually and entered

sudo LANG= source /etc/profile.d/locale.sh

and rebooted, but the system language remains unchanged. I even repeated the process leaving nothing but 'en_US.UTF-8' uncommented in my /etc/locale.gen, but the system is still in German. How can I set my system language to English?

Last edited by kentkentkent (2015-10-25 16:48:06)

kentkentkent

Member

Registered: 2015-09-22

Posts: 12

Re: [Solved] Unable to change system language

I changed the language to English via my login screen, but selecting the "default" brings me to a German session. That's odd because German is uncommented in my locale.gen. I believe I'm using lightdm (I had to temporarily stop using Gnome's dm and left it, I might be wrong).

How can I make English the default language?

Fixxer

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2011-08-29

Posts: 217

Re: [Solved] Unable to change system language

Post outputs of commands:

env | grep LANG

grep -R "LANG" $HOME/*

grep -v "#" /etc/locale.gen

kentkentkent

Member

Registered: 2015-09-22

Posts: 12

Re: [Solved] Unable to change system language

When I'm logged into the English session:

[kent@archbox ~]$ env | grep LANG
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_US.UTF-8

and

[kent@archbox ~]$ grep -R "LANG" $HOME/*

Not getting much here. I'm only seeing files I've placed in my home directory myself. It's usually something like

Binary file /home/kent/Musik/Wolfgun-PROJECTIONS/04_Haus.flac matches

lastly,

[kent@archbox ~]$ grep -v "#" /etc/locale.gen
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8  

I'll post the "Default" session one in a few minutes.

kentkentkent

Member

Registered: 2015-09-22

Posts: 12

Re: [Solved] Unable to change system language

From the "Default" session:

[kent@archbox ~]$ env | grep LANG
LANG=de_DE.utf8
LANGUAGE=de_DE.utf8

and

[kent@archbox ~]$ grep -R "LANG" $HOME/*

gives me the same results as in the English session.

lastly,

[kent@archbox ~]$ grep -v "#" /etc/locale.gen
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8  

It's weird that that last one still shows up as English.

Fixxer

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2011-08-29

Posts: 217

Re: [Solved] Unable to change system language

Maybe in "default" session settings are taken from:

~/.dmrc

What language is choosen in GDM? What display manager are you using? Is there any runtime GDM directory like: /var/run/gdm? What is inside?

kentkentkent

Member

Registered: 2015-09-22

Posts: 12

Re: [Solved] Unable to change system language

Maybe in "default" session settings are taken from:

~/.dmrc

I think this is it. It reads:

[Desktop]
Language=de_DE.UTF-8
Session=gnome

I'm going to change this to en_US.

That's probably it. I'm not using GDM, but LightDM just says "Default".

Fixxer

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2011-08-29

Posts: 217

Re: [Solved] Unable to change system language

Erase Language from this file and check. File ~/.dmrc (if I remember rightly), even if deleted will be renewed after reboot.

xxvirusxx

Member

From: Romania

Registered: 2013-09-09

Posts: 41

Re: [Solved] Unable to change system language

Tested gnome

On locale.conf you need do have this

LANG=en_US.UTF-8

on locale.gen

en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8

Then generate locale

sudo locale-gen

Then when change language from gnome panel ask to restart, then language change in Downloads etc....

Last edited by xxvirusxx (2015-10-25 10:06:27)