For some reason this is poorly supported, more so than in Debian.
Even a bare-bones Debian installation sets up locale better.
I need Norwegian, which is not even included in the installer.
You have to do a manual dpkg-reconfigure locales and then it can be set in mepis system setup. But this does not make the interface (console or X) switch to Norwegian.

I have tried to put the locale settings in .xsession and .bashrc without success.

So if anyone has a tip for setting language and locale settings..

There are a couple of other locale packages available with apt/synaptic. One of them might be better suited for you.

eriefisher

Thank you -- but I think it will take a little more hacking than that __{{emoticon}}__
The locales package should be all you need.

I find it strange that I keep getting the message that
locale not supported by C library

--seems utter nonsense as it _can_ be supported in Debian. But I will investigate further before posting ..

I'm no expert but it seems that because Mepis is kde-based the Debian locale config files have been dispensed with (locales are handled through kde).
This does not work too well when kde is not used.

Setting LANGUAGE, LANG, LC_CTYPE, LC_ALL, export LANG should be sufficient in Debian but
in antix LANG is reset to unset, LANGUAGE en_US UTF8 after every reboot, nb_NO setting is not accepted/kept even though the locale has been installed and set through dpkg-reconfigure locales.

Whatever i do i can not get the console to recognize Norwegian characters.
That would be useful occasionally..

working better now after looking at the /etc/default/locale and /etc/environment file on an etch machine and using something like that.
it's very much a manual process to get it set up though, when the locale cannot be chosen during installation.
But: antix is now my preferred method of installing Debian. Thanx __{{emoticon}}__ )