Language of your system

Discussion
1

Working in a centre of a village of vacation , i find I work with many different nationalitys and many different languages. French being the main, but german, english, dutch, flemish (Belgium) and Spanish… no big deal as linux mint supports all of these and the screens look and feel the same no matter which language I choose, only difference is the order in a menu may change as they display alphabetical. Keyboard layout is usually automatic.

Last year I installed a system in Dutch, but the year after the owner wanted to change the password but she had forgotten the old one… typical, thought i would know it, not something I keep.

Ok no problem, start up into the grub, change the password something i have done before but ONLY if I am sure its legal owner asking.

I then discovered the grub was also in dutch, and the keyboard commands would not work, help brought up all the commands but in dutch. First time I have seen grub in another language.

I know some bios allow language to be changed but always though grub would be in english !

So, as we have members from different countries on our site, some using other language to english.

What do you use on your linux box ?
When on this site your replies are in english, but do you write and the google translate ?
When reading replies do you google translate them ?
Do you have more than one language intalled ?

This is not a race question more about understanding language issues

Btw, she remembered her password about 5 mins later when sat with me discussing her problem, it was her first name and year of birth really hard stuff.

2 Likes
2

nice story, and a strong password she had :smiley:

I started using computers in the 80’s/90’s and only available language was English. Like Commodore 64, MSX… I have never used any other language on computers. I find it odd to use a computer with my native language.

3 Likes
3

I have seen that the Vatican IT Centre and Library use Linux.
https://www.vaticanlibrary.va/en/the-library/it-center.html

I have been unable to determine if they have a Latin version of linux.
It seems unlikely… therevis no latin support

I do know they use Latin in ATM’s.

2 Likes
4

I did have a Algerian client a few years back whose keyboard and system was in Arabic with symbols instead of letters, that took some sorting when issues arise or getting him to explain in broken french .

5

So how did he cope with the Linux CLI?
AFAIK Linux commands are only in English and only use our alphabet.

1 Like
6

Not to mention that in Arabic (and Hebrew and Aramaic) writing direction is right to left - that must be WEIRD in a terminal!
Heaps of Linux in Israel - so I guess it’s not a problem…

1 Like
7

Some writing on stone tablets goes left to right for the first line, then they rotate the tablet 180deg and go left to right again for second line, etc.
It appears with every second line upside down and backwards.
Lets see how that works in a linux terminal?

2 Likes
8

Luckily I did not need to do anything in terminal or complex commands, just using the gui was difficult enough, I abandoned libre office once in the word processor, same with his email he did the user name password then after that left him to it.