Changing the Locale

You can change the locale if the default locale does not meet your requirements.

To find the locale, run the the localectl command:

localectl
System Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8
   VC Keymap: n/a
  X11 Layout: n/a

To change the locale, choose the languages that you want from /usr/share/locale/locale.alias, add them to /etc/locale-gen.conf, and then regenerate the locale list by running the following command as root:

locale-gen.sh

Finally, run the following command to set the new locale, replacing the example (en_US.UTF-8) with the locale that you require:

localectl set-locale LANG="de_CH.UTF-8" LC_CTYPE="de_CH.UTF-8"

Changing the keyboard layout

See which keymaps are currently available on your system:

localectl list-keymaps

If the response to that command is the all-too-common Couldn't find any console keymaps, install the key tables files and utilities:

tdnf install kbd

You should now be able to find a keymap matching your keyboard. As an example, here I’m searching for the German keyboard layout (so I’m expecting something with de in the name) used in Switzerland:

localectl list-keymaps | grep de

    ...
    de-latin1
    de-latin1-nodeadkeys
    de-mobii
    de_CH-latin1
    de_alt_UTF-8
    ...

de_CH-latin1 seems to be what we’re looking for, so change your current layout to that keymap:

localectl set-keymap de_CH-latin1

and confirm that the change has been made:

localectl
System Locale: LANG=de_CH.UTF-8
   VC Keymap: de_CH-latin1
  X11 Layout: n/a

Note: Photon OS comes with a minimal set of locales by default. If you need a full set of locales, you need to install the glibc-i18n package using the following command:

tdnf install -y glibc-i18n