Frank wrote: > Bob Proulx wrote: > > cat /etc/default/locale > > root@frank-debian:/home/frank# cat /etc/default/locale > #LANG=en_US.UTF-8 > > Unexpected..I thought it would be empty ?
For whatever reason the locales package postinst script simply comments out the lines it manages there. I don't know why. I realized I should have said something else too. Let me fix that and say it now. The /etc/default/locale sets the system's default locale. All of the boot time init scripts use it. But PAM also uses it. PAM is the Plugable Auth Modules. Meaning that it also sets the locale for users when they log in. However users that care can also set their locale themselves too. Layers and layers and PAM is almost he lowest layer when logging in. LANG=en_US.UTF-8 in your environment will tell X terminals that they should configure themselves for UTF-8 character sets. Umlauts and accents and all of those. And other things. That should be the default these days. But I fear that I may have led you to not have LANG set in your normal desktop environment now. Because I always set it myself and then also set LC_COLLATE too so that I get a sane sort order and therefore didn't think of it. export LANG=en_US.UTF-8 export LC_COLLATE=C If, and only if, you don't have LANG set anymore due to these actions then you will probably want them. Probaby the easiest for you is to put those two lines in your ~/.xsessionrc file that you would need to create. If you log into systems using ssh then ~/.profile. Bob
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