Languages

Switch languages in crouton (Debian and Ubuntu)

Before you begin

You will need to find your locale (see examples below). On Debian/Ubuntu, you can find a list of these in /usr/share/i18n/SUPPORTED.

Examples: English is en and the United States is US. The locale will be en_US.UTF-8. The encoding is UTF-8, which should be okay for most people.

British English: en_GB.UTF-8

Japanese: ja_JP.UTF-8

Canadian French: fr_CA.UTF-8

Simplified Chinese: zh_CN.UTF-8

Install language packages

Replace {language-code} with the language code from above (ja for Japanese, fr for French, etc.) Replace {locale} with your locale (ja_JP.UTF-8, fr_CA.UTF-8)

Base language pack (everyone)

sudo apt-get install language-pack-{language-code}

Example: (French) sudo apt-get install language-pack-fr

GNOME language pack (GNOME shell, Cinnamon, and Unity)

sudo apt-get install language-pack-gnome-{language-code}

KDE language pack (KDE)

sudo apt-get install language-pack-kde-{language-code}

Libreoffice

sudo apt-get install libreoffice-l10n-{language-code}

Change the default language

sudo update-locale LANG="{locale}" LANGUAGE="{language-code}:en"

Example: (Japanese) sudo update-locale LANG="ja_JP.UTF-8" LANGUAGE="ja:en"

You must restart crouton for changes to take effect!

But I want a GUI!

If you're on Ubuntu, there's a convenient GUI for you! Install language-selector-gnome or language-selector-kde, and run the "Language Support" application. From there, you can install support for any languages you want, and set preferences for language and regional preferences.