language and locale detection

[Duncan Lithgow]

This is an RFE, why can't I mark it as one...

I think it would be great if someone who understands these things could look into smarter ways of guessing what the language might be, hardware clocks timezone should give a hint.

That could trigger a group of 'likely' languages in a section of the scroll down list.

Just a thought.

Duncan

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Moving to ubiquity.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

I'm not sure how feasible this is, really. We actively recommend against setting the hardware clock to local time, as it causes many subtle problems with daylight savings time. Does the way we've pulled the language selection forward to the bootloader help with this?

[Duncan Lithgow (duncan-lithgow)]

Thanks for cleaning up my other bugs.

If you mean that the language dialog is now at the beginning of the live CD (which I will never use - because it doesn't ask permission to overwrite the MBR), I don't see that that makes any difference. It still starts with a list of all languages, and languages are only sometimes useful for guessing locales.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

If you'll never use the live CD, what's the point in filing bugs on ubuntu-express? :-) (Actually, the language choice is offered from the bootloader of both the live CD and the regular install CD. Furthermore, the Edgy live CD installer now asks where to install GRUB.)

[Duncan Lithgow (duncan-lithgow)]

> If you'll never use the live CD, what's the point in filing bugs on ubuntu-express? :-)
Bug seen - bug filed.

> the Edgy live CD installer now asks where to install GRUB.
Thank heavens for that! However because of Bug #58696 I can't check what you say about edgy.

The problem remains: language and keyboard settings are not obvious enough for a live cd session for a new user.

[Michael (michaeljt)]

I think that the installer and the live CD could be a bit smarter in the default choices for language, location and keyboard layout. Something like the following:

1) If the user selects the language but not the keymap when booting the live CD, base the default choice of keymap (for the live CD and the installer) and location on that choice.
2) If the user selects the keymap but not the language when booting, base defaults on that but keep default language as English (rationale: I think that people are more likely to use a keyboard layout corresponding to their country of residence than to their native language).
3) If the user selects both, select the installers default language based on the language chosen at boot time and the keyboard layout and location based on the boot-time choice of keyboard layout.
4) If the user does not choose a keyboard layout at boot time (e.g. I usually do not, as I don't need it just to boot and start the installer), then base the default choice in the installer on the choice of location. The layout used for the live CD could also be switched at this time.

You might also add a more visible option to change the layout quickly once the live CD is running.

[MillenniumBug (millenniumbug)]

This bug report is several years old and concerns obsolete versions of Ubuntu. It has now been marked 'invalid'.

If the bug still appears in Ubuntu 10.10, feel free to open a new report.