"Where are you?" is a potentially misleading question

[O Gopal]

The question "Where are you?" can elicit the wrong response when the user is located in a country other than his usual country of residence.

Ubiquity asks "Where are you?" But the user is not told why the question is being asked or what the consequences of the answer will be.

The only visual cue on the page is a dominant map, showing a time zone. A naive user might therefore very well assume that the answer he gives will determine the time zone to be set for the system. He has no way to know that in fact it will determine all his localization settings -- currency, date format, spell checking, and so on.

When I installed Precise, I did so from Madrid. And because this wasn't my first install and I'm American, I lied and answered "New York." Then, after install, I simply adjusted the timezone, and all was fine.

But earlier, on a previous version, while in South Africa, I truthfully answered "Johannesburg." And when I wound up with South African rand as my currency, a South African spell checker, and so on, I was confused. New to Ubuntu, I also didn't know how to change the localization settings. ("Language support" didn't seem an obvious choice.") Confusing!

Expected behavior:

A page with a big visual of a time zone and the question "Where are you?" will use my answer to set the system's time zone. (And maybe it will tell me that after installation I can easily change it in such-and-such place.)

If my input will be used to determine localization settings, I might be asked "Where do you live?" I might see a graphic showing signs for dollars, pounds, rupees, yen, and so on. And perhaps "Hello" or "Welcome" in a smorgasbord of languages. And I might be told "Ubuntu will use your answer to set the defaults for your currency, language, and other regional settings. After installation you can easily change these."

In "System settings," I might also see "Languages and regional settings" rather than "Language support," which doesn't adeuqately convey what settings this option makes available.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Marcus Tomlinson (marcustomlinson)]

This release of Ubuntu is no longer receiving maintenance updates. If this is still an issue on a maintained version of Ubuntu please let us know.

[O Gopal (jswami)]

In 19.10 this issue persists.

("Language settings," however, has been changed to "Region & Language," which is quite clear.)

[sedlund (scott-edlund)]

It took me a while to track down this problem as well. I was in Malaysia when I reinstalled and picked the appropriate time zone then, but then the login screen comes up with day names in Malay even though my language is English.

This sets locale settings in /etc/default/locale that are inconsistant with my intent of a US American English install. Even after changing the /etc/default/locale to en_US the login manager SDDM still shows Days in Malay - I'm unsure how to resolve.