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After hearing good things about KDE Plasma, I decided to give Kubuntu 18.04 a spin. I was impressed until it came to the long in screen. The biggest issue I had was the language of the date and time displayed on the “Login” and "Lock" screens.

I am an American Expat who lives in Thailand. I have no problem with changing the regional settings from the installed defaults to something I am familiar with. No matter what regional or language setting I changed on Kubuntu, it would always display the date and time in Thai format on the login/ lock screen. The keyboard IS set to American QWERTY and I can login just fine. It is just the Date/ Time being displayed in the wrong language.

Every possible setting in the "System Settings-Regional Settings-Language" and "System Settings-Regional Settings-Formats" is set to "American English" I have also ran sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales in the terminal and made sure the en-US UTF8 was chosen. All to no avail.

Here is a screenshot of what it is doing. I have shown it side by side with the Manjaro version to show exactly what I am talking about.

SDDM differences between Kubuntu and Manjaro KDE Editition

I am at a total lose as to what to do. Any ideas? Thank you all for your time.

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1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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SDDM login screen

KDE Forums: https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?t=137502#p375121 and What locale settings sddm respects?: https://www.bountysource.com/issues/37982685-what-locale-settings-sddm-respects

The SDDM is following the system locales defined in /etc/default/locale:

LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="fi_FI.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="fi_FI.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="fi_FI.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="fi_FI.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="fi_FI.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="fi_FI.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="fi_FI.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="fi_FI.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="fi_FI.UTF-8"

LC_TIME is "fi_FI.UTF-8", so the SDDM Breeze greeter will show: greeter with fi_FI-like time

Changing to US time: LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"

LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="fi_FI.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="en_US.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="fi_FI.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="fi_FI.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="fi_FI.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="fi_FI.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="fi_FI.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="fi_FI.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="fi_FI.UTF-8"

After reboot: American time displayed

To edit the/etc/default/locale you can simply edit it with a text editor or execute the 'update-locale' command (see 'man update-locale' or https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/bionic/man8/update-locale.8.html).

Plasma Lock Screen

Plasma lock screen is part of the Plasma Look and Feel theme, which is not the same as the SDDM greeter theme.

Plasma lock screen is configured in the KDE System Settings

Setting the Time format:

regional settings ... and the Plasma lock screen shows: lock screen with correct time

Alternative SDDM greeters and Plasma lock screens

The KDE Store: https://store.kde.org has many alternative SDDM themes: https://store.kde.org/browse/cat/101/ord/latest/ and Plasma Look and Feel themes: https://store.kde.org/browse/cat/121/ord/latest/

It is possible to add the time format settings to the SDDM greeter configuration files. An example: SDDM Theme Breeze Slider 2 - https://store.kde.org/p/1222217/

enter image description here

...and from the Plasma 5.12 onwards it is possible to add clock configuration options to the lock screen settings. An example: Breeze Custom Lock Screen - https://store.kde.org/p/1216681/ .

enter image description here

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  • Thank you for the response. editing /etc/default/locale fixed it. It seems strange that I chose English as my default everything during install and in the system settings, but the locale file listed Thai as default language for everything.
    – Mark Lines
    May 28, 2018 at 2:40
  • My guess is that the Ubiquity ( wiki.ubuntu.com/Ubiquity ) is collecting the variable values from the keyboard/time zone etc settings and then executing the update-locale.
    – user26687
    May 28, 2018 at 13:52
  • I think that is the case. I have installed Manjaro KDE and Fedora KDE and the regional settings in the System Settings affected SDDM, Whereas with any Ubuntu based distro, Kubuntu and Neon, it does not. Something for me to keep in mind when I am suggesting distros to people. I did try to install the Breeze Custom Lock Screen, but I could not get it to work. None of the customization options showed up like in your screen shot. I will keep working on it and if I have some issues, I will post a new question. Thank you again for your help!
    – Mark Lines
    May 29, 2018 at 10:58
  • The Manjaro seems to use own KCM to handle the locales. The KCM has the System Locales tab. The Breeze Custom Lock ( store.kde.org/p/1216681 ) is telling under known issues: "The "Show media controls" configure option is broken in the Kubuntu 18.04. More: kubuntuforums.net/showthread.php/… ".
    – user26687
    May 29, 2018 at 15:52
  • Got it, I will look into it more deeply. I am grateful for your help in teaching me new stuff. That is one thing I love about Linux, I am always learning something new!
    – Mark Lines
    May 29, 2018 at 16:22

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