Comment 11 for bug 542113

This has nothing to do with GDM, this is related to the new way that Ubuntu handles languages in Gnome.

At the moment, the system language is set properly by GDM (as can be witnessed through Firefox for example) but ignored inside Gnome, the way languages are handled in Gnome is through a preferences list. The idea behind the preferences list is to allow a fallback option in case an application does not support a user's primary language, it can support a user's secondary language instead.

However, this comes at a cost of having to log out and then in again in order to change the primary language and gives a slightly tricky interface for configuration. Also, I do not believe that this reflects how a multi-language environment actually works, for example, my girlfriend and I use the same user account but different languages, it was quite easy with Karmic's system but extremely frustrating now.

The use case for this system is good for an African who speaks French as their second language or a dude from Transcaucasia or something that speaks Russian as their second language, but the vast majority of the world either have a primary language that has been fully translated, English as a second language, do not use Ubuntu, or all three. I think the bulk of users will want to be switching between two fully translated languages, since those are the popular ones and the old system was far better for that.

Anyway, GDM works flawlessly with respect to language, could someone re-file this?