Using multiple languages in dom0

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Installing additional languages

Switching languages is pretty easy in your domUs. However, in dom0, there’s only English available after installation if no additional languages have been installed. To install more languages in dom0, use the following command:

sudo qubes-dom0-update glibc-langpack-LANGUAGE

Note that LANGUAGE should be a valid language code, e.g. en for English, de for German, it for Italian and so on.

You can check which languages are available on your system using:

localectl list-locales

Setting a language globally

If you want to switch your whole dom0 from English to some other language, edit the file /etc/locale.conf to include your language code for the LANG= value. For example, to change your dom0 to Italian, the file /etc/locale.conf should contain:

LANG="it_IT.UTF-8"

Important: Using some language other than English is not officially supported, i.e. you might still get a lot of English content which has not been translated to your desired language.

Setting only some formats

If you just want to change some format specifiers, you can add the LC_* identifier in the same file, below the LANG= code. Avoid the LC_ALL identifier, because it overwrites all previous settings! For example, to use German time formats but still use the English language as default for anything else, you would write the following in /etc/locale.conf:

LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="de_DE.UTF-8"

Those codes must be supported by your dom0 (check with localectl list-locales).

After you finished editing, check your new setup with localectl status. You might need to logout and login back again to enable your changes in the environment (e.g. in the window manager or its applets).

You might also want to inspect the changes introduced by adding/editing one LC_* rule in the config file. Use locale -k $rule for this purpose, e.g. locale -k LC_TIME to show the formats exported by the setting of the LC_TIME.

If you see “broken characters” like � somewhere, check the encoding of the affected application. The default terminal emulator in dom0 does not use Unicode as default encoding and therefore has some problems when it’s not adjusted accordingly.

This document was migrated from the qubes-community project
  • Page archive
  • First commit: 13 Jan 2021. Last commit: 13 Jan 2021.
  • Applicable Qubes OS releases based on commit dates and supported releases: 4.0
  • Original author(s) (GitHub usernames): CrsiX
  • Original author(s) (forum usernames): N/A
  • Document license: GPLv2