I found out quite by accident that VSIDO keeps the:
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
setting even though I told the installer to use
en_CA.UTF-8 UTF-8
So I went looking for a way to get my choice as the default.
It was a lot easier than I though:
Configuring Locales (http://people.debian.org/~schultmc/locales.html) - gave me what I needed.
Debian wiki - Locale (http://wiki.debian.org/Locale) - Interesting reading as well
All packages needed for this are installed in VSIDO by default (I believe, I've been wrong before).
Start with:
sector11 @ sector11
11 Feb 13 | 18:07:41 ~
$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales
password for sector11:
First A Word of CAUTION: what you select below are the "locales" that will remain active in your system.
Using the bash alias "up" to update / dist-upgrade your system that 'removes' any locales that newly updated / installed programs may drag into your system will be removed. This is where I saw that my 'en_CA.UTF-8' locale was being removed.
Hey, that's my locale, I want it! ;)
So to continue: put an '*' in the locales you want to keep, you can choose multiple. And remove the '*' from locales you do not wish to have on your system.
Package configuration
┌──────────────────────────┤ Configuring locales ├──────────────────────────┐
│ Locales are a framework to switch between multiple languages and allow │
│ users to use their language, country, characters, collation order, etc. │
│ │
│ Please choose which locales to generate. UTF-8 locales should be chosen │
│ by default, particularly for new installations. Other character sets may │
│ be useful for backwards compatibility with older systems and software. │
│ │
│ Locales to be generated: │
│ │
│ | | en_BW ISO-8859-1 ↑ │
│ | | en_BW.UTF-8 UTF-8 ▮ │
│ | | en_CA ISO-8859-1 ▒ │
│ |*| en_CA.UTF-8 UTF-8 ▒ │
│ | | en_DK ISO-8859-1 ▒ │
│ | | en_DK.ISO-8859-15 ISO-8859-15 ↓ │
│ │
│ │
│ <Ok> <Cancel> │
│ │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Screen 2:
Package configuration
┌──────────────────────────┤ Configuring locales ├──────────────────────────┐
│ Many packages in Debian use locales to display text in the correct │
│ language for the user. You can choose a default locale for the system │
│ from the generated locales. │
│ │
│ This will select the default language for the entire system. If this │
│ system is a multi-user system where not all users are able to speak the │
│ default language, they will experience difficulties. │
│ │
│ Default locale for the system environment: │
│ │
│ None │
│ en_CA.UTF-8 │
│ │
│ │
│ <Ok> <Cancel> │
│ │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
sector11 @ sector11
11 Feb 13 | 18:10:02 ~
$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales
Generating locales (this might take a while)...
en_CA.UTF-8... done
Generation complete.
sector11 @ sector11
11 Feb 13 | 18:12:24 ~
$
And my '/etc/default/locale' is a one liner:
LANG=en_CA.UTF-8
OK, I'm 8)
My thanks to drum for joining and reminding me I've wanted to put this up for a while now.
^ great how-to Sector11
Well done Sector11.. very detailed and informative
Nice! ;D