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This has been problematic for me in Ubuntu since I live in the UK but want the week to start on a Sunday (because that is the system my work use). I've faffed about in the last couple of versions of Ubuntu to no avail (it changes in Evolution but not on the desktop calendar etc.) and don't want to be editing locale files.

I understand it's probably an issue with GNOME so are there any plans to implement it with Unity? I find it baffling that an operating system doesn't have such a simple option that even my phones always seem to have had.

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This should be filed as a bug report. – Jorge Castro Jan 30 '11 at 16:17
But currently this is a GNOME issue and my question relates to Unity. – Roddie Jan 30 '11 at 16:34
Right, you should file it as a bug report for Unity. – Jorge Castro Jan 30 '11 at 17:34
I don't use Unity, that's why I'm asking. – Roddie Jan 30 '11 at 18:26
Right, if you want the option in unity you need to file a bug report to let someone know that it's a wanted feature; I've searched through and haven't seen it filed yet. – Jorge Castro Jan 30 '11 at 21:18

closed as off topic by belacqua, jrg♦ May 23 '12 at 17:18

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2 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

You are looking for a locale override for the start of week feature of your locale. As you mention, Evolution provides such an override.

The gtk+ library no longer provides a way to override the locale information for the start of the week, http://library.gnome.org/devel/gtk/2.21/GtkCalendar.html#GtkCalendarDisplayOptions

GTK_CALENDAR_WEEK_START_MONDAY
    Since GTK+ 2.4, this option is deprecated and ignored by GTK+. 
    The information on which day the calendar week starts is derived 
    from the locale.

Adapting your current locale is not a difficult task, and you may have to go through this venue to solve the problem. That is, either change your locale to, let's say, en_US (start of week is Sunday) or modify your existing locale.

To modify your locale

gksudo gedit /usr/share/i18n/locales/en_GB

and change the values for first_weekday and first_workday. Sunday is 1, Monday is 2, etc. Then, regenerate the locales with

sudo locale-gen

and finally logout and then login again for the changes to take effect.

Note that if there are any updates of the locales package and you install them, you have to apply the above changes again.

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Thank you for your well-formatted and informative post, but I specifically stated that I did not want to be forced to use such a workaround. I'm aware of this method and have used it, but dislike its relative unnecessary complexity and limitations and so wish to know whether a more elegant solution will be put into place with the implementation of Unity. The week-starting option is something that is user-specific, not nation-specific so I feel that it really shouldn't have to be changed in this way. – Roddie Jan 30 '11 at 14:35
But still worth an upvote, I reckon. Roddie - yeah, this should be user specific - I prefer the week to start on Monday and live in the UK, so over-riding this behaviour should be a trivial option in the date/time settings. It certainly is in Windows with Outlook. – Scaine Jan 30 '11 at 15:11
up vote 1 down vote accepted

As per Jorge Castro's suggestion, this has been reported as a bug on Launchpad:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-control-center/+bug/878767

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Thank you for making Ubuntu better. You're quite right. Such workarounds should not be required. Problems should be fixed, not hidden. – Jo-Erlend Schinstad Oct 20 '11 at 11:12

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