How to change Debian GNU / Linux console (tty)
language to Bulgarian or Russian Language
Debian has a package
language-env. I haven't used my Linux
console for a long time. So I couldn't exactly remember how I used
to be making the Linux console to support cyrillic language
(CP1251, bg_BG.UTF-8) etc.
I've figured out for the
language-env existence in Debian
Book on hosted on
OpenFMI -
Bulgarian Faculty of
Mathematics and Informatics website.
The package info with apt-cache show displays like that:
hipo@noah:~/Desktop$ apt-cache show language-env|grep -i -A 3
description
Description: simple configuration tool for native language
environment
This tool adds basic settings for natural language environment such
as
LANG variable, font specifications, input methods, and so on
into
user's several dot-files such as .bashrc and
.emacs.
What is really strange, is the package maintainer is not Bulgarian,
Russian or Ukrainian but Japanese.
As you see the developer is weirdly not Bulgarian but Japanese
Kenshi Muto. What is even more interesting is that it is
another japanese that has actually written the script
set-language-env contained within the package. Checking the
script in the header one can see him,
Tomohiro KUBOTA
Before I've found about the
language-env existence, I knew I
needed to have the respective locales installed on the system
with:
# dpkg-reconfigure locales
So I run
dpkg-reconfigure to check I have existing the
locales for adding the Bulgarian language support.
Checking if the
bulgarian locale is installed is also
possible with
/bin/ls:
# ls -al /usr/share/i18n/locales/*|grep -i bg
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8614 Feb 12 21:10
/usr/share/i18n/locales/bg_BG
The
language-env contains a
perl script called
set-language-env which is doing the actual
Debian
Bulgarization / cyrillization. The set-language-env author is
another Japanese and again not Slavonic person.
Actually
set-language-env script is not doing the
Bulgariazation but is a wrapper script that uses a number of
"hacks" to make the console support cyrillic.
Further on to make the console support cyrillic, execute:
hipo@noah:~$ set-language-env
Setting up users' native language environment
by modifying their dot-files.
Type "set-language-env -h" for help.
1 : be (Bielaruskaja,Belarusian)
2 : bg (Bulgarian)
3 : ca (Catala,Catalan)
4 : da (Dansk,Danish)
5 : de (Deutsch,German)
6 : es (Espanol,Spanish)
7 : fr (Francais,French)
8 : ja (Nihongo,Japanese)
9 : ko (Hangul,Korean)
10 : lt (Lietuviu,Lithuanian)
11 : mk (Makedonski,Macedonian)
12 : pl (Polski,Polish)
13 : ru (Russkii,Russian)
14 : sr (Srpski,Serbian)
15 : th (Thai)
16 : tr (Turkce,Turkish)
17 : uk (Ukrajins'ka,Ukrainian)
Input number > 2
There are many questions in cyrillic list necessery to be answered
to exactly define if you need cyrillic language support for GNOME,
pine, mutt, console etcetera.
The script will create or append commands to a number of files on
the system like
~/.bash_profile
The script uses the
cyr command part of the Debian
console-cyrillic package for the actual Bulgarian Linux
localization.
As said it was supposed to also do a localization in the past of
many Graphical environment programs, as well as include Bulgarian
support for GNOME desktop environment. Since GNOME nowdays is
already almost completely translated through its native language
files, its preferrable that localization to be done on Linux
install time by selecting a country language instead of later doing
it with
set-language-env. If you failed to set the GNOME
language during Linux install, then using
set-language-env
will still work. I've tested it and even though a lot of time
passed since set-language-env was heavily used for bulgarization
still the GUI env bulgarization works.
If
set-language-env is run in gnome-terminal the result, the
whole set of question dialogs will pop-up in new xterm and due to a
bug, questions imposed will be unreadable as you can see in below
screenshot:
If you want to remove the bulgarization, later at certain point,
lets you don't want to have the cyrillic console or programs
support use:
# set-language-env -r
The script will create
For anyone who wish to know more in depth, how set-language-env
works check the README files in
/usr/share/doc/language-env/
one readme written by the author of the Bulgarian localization part
of the package
Anton Zinoviev is
/usr/share/doc/language-env/README.be-bg-mk-sr-uk