Bug 516550 - Conflating LANGUAGE and LANG causes UI breakage for locales like de_CH
Summary: Conflating LANGUAGE and LANG causes UI breakage for locales like de_CH
Status: CONFIRMED
Alias: None
Product: systemsettings
Classification: Applications
Component: kcm_regionandlang (other bugs)
Version First Reported In: 6.5.80
Platform: KDE Linux Linux
: HI normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Plasma Bugs List
URL:
Keywords: usability
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2026-02-23 00:50 UTC by Nate Graham
Modified: 2026-06-01 04:59 UTC (History)
6 users (show)

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Latest Commit:
Version Fixed/Implemented In:
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Description Nate Graham 2026-02-23 00:50:34 UTC
See https://invent.kde.org/kde-linux/kde-linux/-/issues/523.

Basically if you set the locale to de_CH in the installer, LANG gets set to that and the KCM shows "Schweizer Hochdeutsch" (Swiss German") as the language, but Swiss German isn't a language, so this causes several problems:
1. The UI string is wrong; the actual language is German
2. If you go to change it, you won't find Swiss German in the language list
3. There's no way to set a new top-level locale that doesn't correspond to a language

Suggestions:
1. offer a top-level setting that sets LANG
2. populate the "Language" setting automatically with what LANG says, but offer the current UI to override it or add more languages
Comment 1 Marcel 2026-02-24 13:42:06 UTC
As I already tried to explain, locale and lang are not the same thing. Only the first two characters of locale (e.g. de) define the language. Locale defines the entire setting of the language region (language, time zone, currency, etc.).
In the installer, I would first query the language (lang=de). Then, by querying the keyboard settings (de_ch), it can be automatically recognised that locale = de_ch. This provides the necessary values for correct localisation. The system language remains ‘de’.
Comment 2 Nate Graham 2026-02-24 20:11:52 UTC
> As I already tried to explain, locale and lang are not the same thing.
Right. The problem with our config UI here is that we try to combine them into one thing, even though they're different. We need to stop doing that.
Comment 3 Marcel 2026-02-24 21:03:42 UTC Comment hidden (spam)
Comment 4 Marcel 2026-03-06 10:40:14 UTC Comment hidden (spam)
Comment 5 Nate Graham 2026-03-09 02:23:52 UTC Comment hidden (spam)
Comment 6 Marcel 2026-04-14 14:24:43 UTC
Today I took a quick look at the new Fedora Desktop Edition version 44. I noticed that Fedora 44 probably uses the same installer as KDE Linux. However, it has been designed in such a way that it correctly prompts the user for their language, keyboard layout and region. It would certainly be a great example.
Comment 7 Nate Graham 2026-04-15 14:36:02 UTC
It's a different installer, it just looks a lot more like the Calamares installed KDE Linux uses than their older installer did.
Comment 8 fminjoy@gmail.com 2026-05-01 05:11:51 UTC
(In reply to Marcel from comment #6)
> Today I took a quick look at the new Fedora Desktop Edition version 44. I
> noticed that Fedora 44 probably uses the same installer as KDE Linux.
> However, it has been designed in such a way that it correctly prompts the
> user for their language, keyboard layout and region. It would certainly be a
> great example.

KDE Desktop then over-writes the OS selection on first login after install, since you can't select all languages available in the OS installer and can't move past the second KDE configuration before using the system. Pending a real solution you can update the language via terminal (not the GUI), per Nate Graham's advice in this post https://discuss.kde.org/t/australian-or-even-similar-language/45862/2 "In the meantime, you can set LANG=en_AU.UTF8 in ~/.config/plasma-localerc"
Comment 9 kde.unmasked154 2026-05-31 00:50:03 UTC
Anyone found a fix for this? Fedora 43 KDE worked perfectly with en-AU however it's broken on 44. Everything is spelt oddly, my system is telling me we are in the 31st Month. I've got assignments due and my first draft was already marked down because everything was spelt American. I can't change to UK either because every thing is in miles or pounds instead of Australian Metric.
Comment 10 kde.unmasked154 2026-05-31 00:52:25 UTC
My language is still set as English (Australian) it's just Plasma complains about it and automatically uses US
Comment 11 TraceyC 2026-05-31 01:50:12 UTC
Changing back to CONFIRMED, which means it was reproduced. You shouldn't change this to REPORTED.
Comment 12 kde.unmasked154 2026-05-31 02:15:53 UTC
My apologies, I didnt want to. The web front-end forced me to make a choice and there isn't any obvious chart/guide in what is appropriate for what so I made what I thought to be the best decision.