Hi,
Just the other day I decided to install OpenSUSE on my new-old computer for my father (it came with windows 10 which is just awful) and the requirement was quite simple: browser (firefox) and FreeCell.
Even though I set language as “Polish” in the installer, afterwards the whole system was in English. In KDE there wasn’t any option to change language as only “C” and “American English” was available. After a bit of searching I installed -locale- packages for everything plasma (and everything that had anything related to translation/localisation) and afterwards most of the OS was in Polish (not all parts of Plasma though but from what I saw in their translation portal it doesn’t have 100% polish translation but I’ll help with that later on).
However - I couldn’t select Polish in on of the KDE apps (KPatience, KMines) - they only had “American english” selected and nothing else available.
I tried setting locale via localectl but it didn’t help.
Interestingly enough, when I installed Aisleriot from suse repositories it was in english but when I reinstalled it from flathub it switched to polish (on it’s own).
Any hints how can I get KDE apps/system to be in Polish?
Sorry, but only posted the “status” in Screenshot_20251025_201155 image. However the rest of the command was similar and it had pl_PL.UTF-8 everywher (except for LC_ALL).
I also set it in (if memory serves me right): /etc/default/locale and used localectl set-locale
Sadly, after hours of trying to get this working I ended up trying other distro and everything JustWorked
Alas: it’s highly confusing that almost all guides point to “just use YaST” while it’s gone from Leap 16
From a desktop POV, YaST not needed. The System Settings > Region and Language utility is relevant here. You’d first need to install the language support packages for both KDE and KMines:
Why? It most certainly is not needed. This package contains the sources from which individual locale data is built. And to my best knowledge openSUSE still does not enable the KDE ability to generate locale on the fly.
Just being careful really…in case some non-KDE apps, scripts, or other system tools require glibc locales to provide pl_PL.UTF-8 eg things like date/time formatting, number formats, or console apps that might otherwise remain in English. I’m open to correction on that.
KDE control panel is confusing. The “language” there refers to the translations and it only looks at the available translations of one specific KDE component.
This is somewhat confusing indeed. Alas - I did install all lang packages that I was able to find and still wasn’t able to select “Polish”.
And maybe YaST is not needed but if someone is looking for a solution it was what popped up everywhere.
Not to mention that I DID select Polish during installation and installer was in Polish so imagine my confusion. AFAIR on Tumblewheed there are already all locale packages already installed.
Hmm, still - why the language locales are missing?
Again - I installed “other distro”, selected Polish during installation and afterwards I had everything in Polish. Going to Discovery offered me all available languages and switching to Spanish and a restart later I had everything in Spanish.
I chose Leap for stability (as it’s a machine for my elderly father that I can’t do maintenance regularly) and faced weird issues
Thats the obvious language setting agama and only sets the language for the installer. You may configure language settings later on during the install process, it is not as visible as the first one.
How are you expecting anyone to guess? You neither showed what was installed originally nor what did you install later.
The obvious answer - if my guess was correct and the problem was indeed the missing language package - because installer did not do something that was necessary. Someone needs to identify this “something” and submit either well written bug report showing what was missing exactly or better PR implementing the necessary steps to do it.
Hmm… it wasn’t obvious from the installer that it’s only for installer (and I didn’t saw anything else and I tried to check everything just in case).
Alas, one would assume that if you select language, selecting it once would be enough and it should be applied to both the installation process and also afterwards - isn’t it?
Because I’m short on time and had until tomorrow to get the device for my father up and running, thus I wiped opensuse and tried different distro.
I tried Leap because it boasts: “Leap gives users, developers, and sysadmins one of the best and most reliable Linux experiences available.”
Alas, I’ll try to reproduce it more in details later on… well, actually I’m installing it now in the VM
So, in the installer selected everything Polish in “Localization”:
(rest of the images will be links due to discours limitations!)
That is likely the reason why the language packages were not installed. YaST did configure zypper locales which caused it to install packages providing the requested languages. Looks like Agama does not do it. Whether it is intentional or not I do not know.
Let us call it a little “bumpy”, it is a new animal and I got so excited (2x new install ex-win10-machines), that I tend to push every/more buttons than appropriate. It is a KDE thing too, doing the settings on place, hands off yast, logging out - logging in or rebooting did it in my case.
Well, OK. But if there is a problem shouldn’t it be listed as “Known Issue” somewhere or else be a showstopper? Or at least list steps how to fix it?
OK, but other distros (ekhm, I tried Fedora as there was KDE Nate’s blog about KDE Linux and he mentioned it so I decided to give it a try) and in that case, while I have to relogin to change the language, I had all locales after the installation available in system settings and then locale selected during the installation was applied…
Are you asking me? Yes, I think it is a bug. I also do not see how what I think matters in this case. I am not the Agama developer. If you need the definite answer, you need to ask them.
To make sure zypper installs all language packages which (declare support for) your language, add the language to the list of locales:
ndrei@leap160:~/src/mokutil> sudo zypper addlocale pl
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
Added locale: pl
Resolving package dependencies...
The following 56 NEW packages are going to be installed:
accountsservice-lang at-spi2-core-lang bash-lang cnf-locale coreutils-lang cpio-lang cryptsetup-lang
desktop-translations dialog-lang diffutils-lang elfutils-lang findutils-lang firewalld-lang gdbm-lang gdk-pixbuf-lang
ghostscript-fonts-grops glib2-lang glibc-lang gpg2-lang grep-lang gtk2-lang gtk3-lang info-lang libbytesize-lang
libgtop-lang libidn2-lang libpwquality-lang libwnck-lang libxfce4util-lang libxfce4windowing-lang parted-lang
popt-lang procps-lang sed-lang shared-mime-info-lang systemd-lang tar-lang thunar-lang thunar-volman-lang udisks2-lang
upower-lang util-linux-lang wget-lang xfce4-appfinder-lang xfce4-notifyd-lang xfce4-panel-lang
xfce4-power-manager-lang xfce4-session-lang xfce4-settings-lang xfce4-whiskermenu-plugin-lang xfconf-lang
xfdesktop-lang xfwm4-lang xkeyboard-config-lang xz-lang yast2-trans-pl
56 new packages to install.
Package download size: 34.2 MiB
Package install size change:
| 177.8 MiB required by packages that will be installed
177.8 MiB | - 0 B released by packages that will be removed
Backend: classic_rpmtrans
Continue? [y/n/v/...? shows all options] (y):
Fix what exactly? The behavior of the installer? This needs changes in the installer code. The list of language packages on your system? See above how to add desired translations to zypper. The incomplete/missing translation of individual components and applications? That is upstream problem and needs to be solved there.
