Re: Booting a system in a specific language

[Andrei Borzenkov]

04.02.2017 20:04, scootergrisen пишет:
> I test out different Linux distributions and some distributions offer to
> select language during boot and some does not.
> 
> It helps when i can select language and keyboard layout etc. during boot
> so i dont have to change the language etc. from inside GNOME or what ever.
> 
> But does GRUB have anything to do about booting a system in a specific
> language or does each distribution modify GRUB to be able to change
> language.
> 
> Some distributions seem to be able to change the language of the GRUB
> boot menu and some does not.
> 

Internally GRUB supports l10n (reimplementation of gettext). Some
distributions install language catalogs; how they select them is
distribution-dependent. But grub-mkconfig and scripts that are shipped
with GRUB itself do not make use of this and emit strings in fixed
language, as set at the time grub-mkconfig runs so you cannot change
menu language without regenerating it. That would be something to
consider after 2.02 release.

As for keyboard layout, unfortunately only at_keyboard supports run-time
switch and it apparently has problems on real hardware. Default BIOS
input driver has fixed layout. There was proposed patch to implement
layouts on top of extended keyboard BIOS interface.