2. Choosing your Language

The first step is to choose your preferred language. If you have already changed the language at the CD boot splash screen (Figure 22.1, “Very First Installation Welcome Screen”) and don't need additional languages to be installed, you can safely move to the next step.

Figure 22.2. Choosing the Default Language

Choosing the Default Language

Open the tree representing the continent you're located in, then choose your language. Your language choice will affect the installer, the documentation, and the system in general.

Multi-Language System. Use the list accessible through the Multi languages button to select other languages to be installed on your system, thereby installing the language-specific files for system documentation and applications (translations, fonts, spell checkers, etc.) For example, if Spanish friends are to use your machine, select English as the default language in the tree view and Español in the list view. You may choose several, or even install them all by selecting the All languages option. Make sure you select all languages which are likely to be useful on the machine now, once the system is installed it may be difficult to configure support for languages not chosen at install time.

[Note] UTF-8 (Unicode) Support

Unicode is a character encoding intended to cover all existing languages and alphabets, and Mandriva Linux uses it by default. However, if you have previously noticed problems with it for your language, you can resort to your language-specific encoding by selecting the Old compatibility (non UTF-8) encoding option.

[Tip] Switching from one Language to Another

To switch between the various languages installed on your system, you can launch the localedrake command as root to change the language used by the entire system. Running the command as a regular user only changes the language settings for that particular user.