How to Change or Set System Locales in Linux

How to Change or Set System Locales in Linux

A locale is a set of environmental variables that defines the language, country, and character encoding settings (or any other special variant preferences) for your applications and shell session on a Linux system. The system locale specifies which bitmap fonts and code pages (for example, ANSI or DOS) are used on the system by default. Locales defines language and country specific setting for your programs and shell session. You can use locales to see date, time, number, currency and other values formatted as per your country or language on a Linux.

How to find System Locale in Linux:

View information about the current installed locale, use the locale or localectl commands.

[root@server1 ~]# locale
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=
[root@server1 ~]# localectl
   System Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8
       VC Keymap: us
      X11 Layout: n/a
[root@server1 ~]#

How To display a list of all available locales?

[root@server1 ~]# locale -a
aa_DJ
aa_DJ.iso88591
aa_DJ.utf8
aa_ER
aa_ER@saaho
aa_ER.utf8
aa_ER.utf8@saaho
aa_ET
aa_ET.utf8
af_ZA
af_ZA.iso88591
af_ZA.utf8
am_ET
am_ET.utf8
an_ES
an_ES.iso885915
an_ES.utf8
ar_AE
ar_AE.iso88596
ar_AE.utf8
ar_BH
ar_BH.iso88596
ar_BH.utf8
ar_DZ
ar_DZ.iso88596
ar_DZ.utf8
ar_EG
ar_EG.iso88596
ar_EG.utf8
ar_IN
ar_IN.utf8
ar_IQ
ar_IQ.iso88596
ar_IQ.utf8
ar_JO
ar_JO.iso88596
ar_JO.utf8
ar_KW
ar_KW.iso88596
ar_KW.utf8
ar_LB
ar_LB.iso88596
ar_LB.utf8
ar_LY
ar_LY.iso88596
ar_LY.utf8
ar_MA
ar_MA.iso88596
ar_MA.utf8
ar_OM
ar_OM.iso88596
ar_OM.utf8
ar_QA
ar_QA.iso88596
ar_QA.utf8
ar_SA
ar_SA.iso88596
ar_SA.utf8
ar_SD
ar_SD.iso88596
ar_SD.utf8
ar_SY
ar_SY.iso88596
ar_SY.utf8
ar_TN
ar_TN.iso88596
ar_TN.utf8
ar_YE
ar_YE.iso88596
ar_YE.utf8
as_IN
as_IN.utf8
ast_ES
ast_ES.iso885915
ast_ES.utf8
ayc_PE
ayc_PE.utf8
az_AZ
az_AZ.utf8
be_BY
be_BY.cp1251
be_BY@latin
be_BY.utf8
be_BY.utf8@latin
bem_ZM
bem_ZM.utf8
ber_DZ
ber_DZ.utf8
ber_MA
.......

[root@server1 ~]# localectl list-locales
aa_DJ
aa_DJ.iso88591
aa_DJ.utf8
aa_ER
aa_ER.utf8
aa_ER.utf8@saaho
aa_ER@saaho
aa_ET
aa_ET.utf8
af_ZA
af_ZA.iso88591
af_ZA.utf8
am_ET
am_ET.utf8
an_ES
an_ES.iso885915
an_ES.utf8
ar_AE
ar_AE.iso88596
ar_AE.utf8
ar_BH
ar_BH.iso88596
ar_BH.utf8
ar_DZ
ar_DZ.iso88596
ar_DZ.utf8
ar_EG
ar_EG.iso88596
ar_EG.utf8
ar_IN
.......

How To set a locale?

[root@server1 ~]# localectl set-locale ar_IQ.iso88596