Table of Contents

Change Language from Chinese to English

Automatic Method

locale_dialog can do this for you for English. Go to a terminal: Ctrl-Alt-T and type:

/opt/xandros/bin/locale_dialog

Click the TOP radio button and the left-hand button for the two subsequent dialogs boxes (ie. OK). After that the system will reboot.

You may want to uninstall Taiwanese software,or programs, or languagepacks to save diskspace (tested on EeePc701). This does not uninstall the English versions or programs! Go here: http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:freespace

Manual Method

  1. Start Eee PC
  2. Press Ctrl-Alt-T to open Terminal
  3. Type sudo /usr/bin/oowriter /etc/default/locale &
    (Another editor may be used to modify this file.)
  4. Change line to LANG=en_US.UTF-8
  5. press Ctrl-Alt-backspace or Reboot.

It is also possible to change to another language, e.g.

More information on language settings can be found in the i18n document.

Note: This changes only the language in the OS. Applications1) retain their language settings.

After changing the OS language (for example from zh_TW to en_US), to change the language of any applications that stay in the previous language rename the directory /usr/share/locale/zh_TW to something else such as /usr/share/locale/zh_TW.old.

To change the keyboard layout, open a console (ctrl+alt+t) and open the control center with

kcontrol

Go to Peripheral Devices/Keyboard Layout. Choose the approriate layout. Hit 'Apply'. To make the change stick (even in easy mode) continue in the console:

sudo kate /etc/alternatives/x-session-manager

Search for the line sudo rm /tmp/nologin and add the following line before it:

(sleep 3; /usr/bin/kxkb) &

Close kate and close the console.

You may want to uninstall Taiwanese software, programs, or languagepacks to save diskspace (tested on EeePc701). This does not uninstall the English versions or programs! Go here: http://wiki.eeeuser.com/howto:freespace

Special characters

You may want to use French accent for example:

  cd /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/
  sudo cp us us.old (in case of any trouble make sudo cp us.old us to remove modification)
  sudo kwrite us

then look for

  partial alphanumeric_keys
  xkb_symbols "intl" {
  name[Group1]= "U.S. English - International (with dead keys)";
  include "us(basic)"

In that case You are going to change the US Keyboard with International layout

For example replace the line key <TLDE> …. with

  key <TLDE> { [    egrave, dead_tilde,         grave,       asciitilde ] };

then save and restart with Ctrl Alt BackSpace

The second button top left will give you è instead of '

Usable modifications :

   key <AE06> { [	   6,ecircumflex,    onequarter,      asciicircum ] };

give ê with Alt e (right Alt of the Keyboard)

   key <AD03> { [	   e,          E,        eacute,           Eacute ] };

give é with Alt e (right Alt of the Keyboard)

   key <AD07> { [	   u,          U,        ugrave,      ucircumflex ] };

give ù with Alt u (right Alt of the Keyboard)

give û with Alt Shift u (right Alt and shift of the Keyboard)

   key <AD08> { [	   i,          I,        iacute,      icircumflex ] };

give í with Alt u (right Alt of the Keyboard)

give î with Alt Shift u (right Alt and shift of the Keyboard)

   key <AD09> { [	   o,          O,        oacute,      ocircumflex ] };

give ó with Alt o (right Alt of the Keyboard)

give ô with Alt Shift o (right Alt and shift of the Keyboard)

1) some like OpenOffice, the menu will change accordingly