Setting Locale#

WARNING: The following method is tested on Arch. Please consult your distro's documentation before doing anything!

To set the locale correctly (on Arch),

First, make sure that the session locale is not set in another way, e.g., by a script file like ~/.bashrc, or in LXQt Session Settings → Environment — because otherwise, it will interfere with the following procedure.
Uncomment the needed locales in /etc/locale.gen. Example:
```
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
en_CA.UTF-8 UTF-8
```
Run sudo locale-gen to generate the uncommented locales.
Set LANG inside /etc/locale.conf. Example:
```
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
```
Now, create ~/.config/locale.conf and add session tweaks to it, if any. For example, to keep LANG=en_US.UTF-8 but to use en_CA for the date format, put the following lines in ~/.config/locale.conf:
```
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_TIME=en_CA.UTF-8
```
Log out and log in again to see the effect. For example, with the above vaules, the date columns of PCManFM-Qt will become like this:
```
2025-1-2 1:00 p.m.
```

It is recommended to make tweaks locally, although they can also be made globally, inside /etc/locale.conf.

Some environment variables that can be tweaked in this way:

LC_NUMERIC
LC_TIME
LC_MONETARY
LC_MEASUREMENT

NOTE:#

Unfortunately, GUI tools for setting locales may lead to inconsistencies and create problems, especially in non-Qt apps. The most common problems are related to messages like "Locale not supported by C Library" when launching a GTK app; also, XTerm may not work at all.

The root cause of such issues is usually that a region is set in those tools without its corresponding locale being generated by locale-gen in the first place.