Setting the language in the KDE config (i.e. in $kdehome/share/config/kdeglobals) does not affect $LANG in the X windows environment. (Mucks up wine (crossover office), Pan etc - these all benefit from this environment variable). My own fix is to add : export LANG=$(grep Language $kdehome/share/config/kdeglobals | sed 's/Language=//') in startkde following the determination of the user's kde home directory. Obviously the update is not dynamic - it only takes effect after logging in, but better than nothing. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.Set language in KDE control module 2.logout / login 3. Actual Results: $LANG not set, (non KDE) applications that depend on this use default internationalisation. Expected Results: Set $LANG. Allows internationalisation for non KDE apps (in my case British...) Portage 2.0.51.22-r2 (default-linux/x86/2005.1, gcc-3.3.6, glibc-2.3.5-r1, 2.6.11.11 i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.11.11 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.40GHz Gentoo Base System version 1.6.13 dev-lang/python: 2.3.5-r2 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.12 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.59-r6 sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6 sys-devel/binutils: 2.15.92.0.2-r10 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.18-r1 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.11-r2 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-march=pentium4 -O3 -pipe" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.4/env /usr/kde/3.4/share/config /usr/kde/3.4/shutdown /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/X11/xkb /usr/lib/mozilla/defaults/pref /usr/share/config /usr/share/texmf/dvipdfm/config/ /usr/share/texmf/dvips/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/platex/config/ /usr/share/texmf/xdvi/ /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-march=pentium4 -O3 -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoconfig candy distlocks sandbox sfperms strict" GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://ftp.uni-erlangen.de/pub/mirrors/gentoo ftp://ftp.easynet.nl/mirror/gentoo/ ftp://ftp.tu-clausthal.de/pub/linux/gentoo/ http://gentoo.oregonstate.edu http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/gentoo" LANG="en_GB" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.europe.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="x86 X aalib acl acpi alsa apm arts avi bash-completion berkdb bitmap-fonts bonobo cdr crypt cups curl dga doc dvd eds emacs emacs-w3 emboss encode esd f77 fam fbcon flac foomaticdb fortran gb gd gdbm gif gnome gphoto2 gpm gstreamer gtk gtk2 gtkhtml guile imagemagick imlib innodb ipv6 java jikes joystick jpeg kde lcms libg++ libwww mad maildir mbox mikmod mmx motif mozilla mp3 mpeg mysql nas ncurses nls odbc ogg oggvorbis opengl oss pam pam_console pdflib perl plotutils png python qt quicktime readline ruby samba scanner sdl slang snmp speex spell sse ssl svga tcltk tcpd tetex tiff truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts unicode videos vorbis wmf xine xml xml2 xmms xv zlib userland_GNU kernel_linux elibc_glibc" Unset: ASFLAGS, CTARGET, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, LINGUAS, MAKEOPTS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY
See bug 81965. I also suggest to read http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=45256 and to start a discussion with KDE developers for a change like this. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 81965 ***
