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Lunar Mushrooms
Asked: 2012-03-22 02:19:59 +0800 CST

warning: setlocale: LC_ALL: cannot change locale

  • 772

I want to switch to French locale. So I tried the below command:

myUbundu@myUbundu-desktop:~$ export LC_ALL=fr_FR

But I am getting the warning

-bash: warning: setlocale: LC_ALL: cannot change locale (fr_FR)

How to set the locale to French? Do I need to install additional packages?

locale internationalization language-support

5 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Try the following commands

    sudo locale-gen fr_FR
sudo update-locale LANG=fr_FR
    • 56

  2. I've had the same issue, and none of the answers worked, except dpkg-reconfigure locales. But it is too time consuming to do it this way. Just uncomment all the locales you need in /etc/locale.gen and run locale-gen. Or do it from the command line (as root):

    echo "en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8" > /etc/locale.gen
echo "fr_FR.UTF-8 UTF-8" >> /etc/locale.gen
locale-gen
    • 31

  3. I have fought with this for a week or so.

    The most reliable (and easiest too) for me was to edit my profile file with

    gedit ~/.profile

    An add this language variables to be set at every login

    LANG="en_AU.UTF-8"
LANGUAGE="en_AU:en"

    You need to log out and back in for the change to take effect.

    • 14

  4. Try installing language pack for French, e.g.

    sudo apt-get install language-pack-fr

    For any other language, run: check-language-support -l CODE to check the supported packages, e.g.

    $ check-language-support -l fr
firefox-locale-fr gimp-help-fr hunspell-fr language-pack-fr language-pack-gnome-fr thunderbird-locale-fr wfrench

    Check also: LC_ALL: cannot change locale.

    • 1

  5. UTF-8

    Here is the UTF-8 version of the most voted answer.

    I received the following error:

    -bash: warning: setlocale: LC_ALL: cannot change locale (en_IE.UTF-8)

    Issuing the following command sufficed to get rid of this bash warning:

    $ sudo locale-gen en_IE.UTF-8

    P.S.: The Irish locale en_IE.UTF-8 provides English language with euro € as a currency.

    • 1