Debian: how to change the language from English to French
Solvedjimlanra Posted messages 52 Status Membre -
Hello everyone,
I have installed Debian on my Windows laptop a few days ago using VirtualBox. Despite my extensive research, I can't seem to switch this Linux distribution to French. Only English is offered in the "Languages" settings; unlike the Ubuntu distribution, which provides the option to choose the language during installation.
Can anyone guide me on the procedure to resolve this issue?
Thank you in advance for any response you may have.
3 réponses
Hello,
I'm coming back to the forum to inform you that, after several attempts, I successfully installed the French language on the Debian distribution.
This was achieved by restarting the procedure in VirtualBox using the manual method; this way, at the beginning of the launch, I was offered the choice of language among several languages. By selecting "French," my problem was solved.
I wish you all the best on the forum.
Hello,
Thank you for your feedback. Here are a few tips to avoid having to reinstall.
1) You need to reconfigure the locales as explained here.
dpkg-reconfigure locales
2) The settings (especially localization) specified during installation trigger the installation of task-* packages. There is nothing preventing you from installing them afterwards. Among the interesting packages, we can mention :
- if you are only using text mode :
apt install task-french
- if you are using a graphical environment, let's say KDE :
apt install task-french-desktop task-french-kde-desktop
More generally, you can search for packages related to French with :
apt search french
You will see that some applications also require the installation of dedicated packages (usually named in the format application-l10n-fr or application-i18n-fr. This is the case for example with firefox, thunderbird, chromium, and libreoffice.
Good luck