Generate a Locale from /etc/locale.gen

Note#203

notes
Published

2026-03-30

On Debian-based systems, you can enable a locale in /etc/locale.gen and generate it directly, without using dpkg-reconfigure locales.

Procedure

Enable the locale you want in /etc/locale.gen:

sudo sed -i 's/^# *en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8$/en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8/' /etc/locale.gen

Or edit the file manually:

sudo vim /etc/locale.gen

Generate the enabled locales:

sudo locale-gen

Set the system default locale if needed:

sudo update-locale LANG=en_US.UTF-8

Verify

Check that the locale was generated:

locale -a | grep en_US

Check the current default locale:

locale