In order to keep time properly, you need to select your timezone so that your
system knows where it is located. Look for your timezone in
# ls /usr/share/zoneinfo(Suppose you want to use Brussels) (First copy the proper zone to localtime) # cp /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Brussels /etc/localtime(Now specify your timezone) # nano -w /etc/conf.d/clock TIMEZONE="Europe/Brussels" # date Wed Mar 8 00:46:05 CET 2006
In most Gentoo Linux installations, your hardware clock is set to
UTC (or GMT, Greenwich Mean Time) and then your timezone is
taken into account to determine the actual, local time. If,
for some reason, you need your hardware clock not to be in UTC,
you will need to edit
(recommended:) CLOCK="UTC"(or:) CLOCK="local"
A Locale is a set of information that most programs use for determining country
and language specific settings. The locales and their data are part of the
system library and can be found at
Locale settings are stored in environment variables. These are typically
set in the
| Variable name | Explanation |
|---|---|
Most typically users only set the LANG variable on the global basis. This example is for a unicode German locale:
LANG="de_DE.UTF-8" LC_COLLATE="C"
It's also possible, and pretty common especially in a more traditional UNIX
environment, to leave the global settings unchanged, i.e. in the "
export LANG="de_DE.UTF-8" export LC_COLLATE="C"
Another way of configuring system is to leave it in the default C locale, but
enable UTF-8 character representation at the same time. This option is achieved
using the following settings in
LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8
Using the above snippet, users will be able to see localized file names properly, while not being forced to your preferred language.
For message based localization to work in programs that support it, you will
probably need to have programs compiled with the
Once you have set the right locale, be sure to update your environment variables to make your system aware of the change:
(For system-wide default locale:) # env-update && source /etc/profile(For user-specific locale:) $ source ~/.bashrc
After this, you will need to kill your X server by pressing
Now, verify that the changes have taken effect:
$ locale
There is also additional localisation variable called LINGUAS, which affects
to localisation files that get installed in gettext-based programs, and decides
used localisation for some specific software packages, such as
# nano -w /etc/make.conf(Add in the LINGUAS variable. For instance, for German, Finnish and English:) LINGUAS="de fi en"
If you use a locale that isn't available by default, you should use
# localedef -c -i en_US -f ISO-8859-15 en_US.ISO-8859-15
After having generated the locale, you can export the LANG variable as you see fit.
# export LANG="en_US.ISO-8859-15"
Be sure to update the environment after the change:
# env-update && source /etc/profile
After this, you will need to kill your X server by pressing
You will probably only use one or maybe two locales on your system. You can
specify locales you will need in
en_GB ISO-8859-1 en_GB.UTF-8 UTF-8 de_DE ISO-8859-1 de_DE@euro ISO-8859-15
The next step is to run
You can verify that your selected locales are available by running
The keyboard layout used by the console is set in
KEYMAP="de" KEYMAP="de-latin1" KEYMAP="de-latin1-nodeadkeys"
The keyboard layout to be used by the X server is specified
in
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard1"
...
Option "XkbLayout" "de"
#Option "XkbModel" "pc105" ## this is for international keyboards.
# Option "XkbVariant" "nodeadkeys" ## this would be used for xterm input
...
If you have an international keyboard layout, you should set the option
Deadkeys allow you to press keys that will not show immediately but will be
combined with another letter to produce a single character such as é,è,á,à,
etc. Setting
If you would like to switch between more than one keyboard layout (for example
English and Russian), all you have to do is add a few lines to
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard1"
...
Option "XkbLayout" "us,ru"
Option "XkbOptions" "grp:alt_shift_toggle,grp_led:scroll"
Here,
For KDE you have to install the
In order to get your console to display the Euro symbol, you will need to set
CONSOLEFONT="lat9w-16"
You should verify that
# rc-update -v show | grep -i consolefont
If no runlevel is displayed for
# rc-update add consolefont boot
Getting the Euro symbol to work properly in X is a little bit tougher. The
first thing you should do is change the
fixed -misc-fixed-medium-r-semicondensed--13-120-75-75-c-60-iso8859-15 variable -*-helvetica-bold-r-normal-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-15
Some applications use their own font, and you will have to tell them separately
to use a font with the Euro symbol. You can do this at a user-specific level in
(in your home directory) $ echo 'XTerm*font: fixed' >> .Xresources $ xrdb -merge .Xresources
To use the Euro symbol in (X)Emacs, add the following to
Emacs.default.attributeFont: -*-courier-medium-r-*-*-*-120-*-*-*-*-iso8859-15
For XEmacs (not plain Emacs), you have to do a little
more. In
(define-key global-map '(EuroSign) '[€])
The current stable