I've been using Mepis for years to my great satisfaction.
With M7 and now M8 too I have odd ( Russian, Belarus ) characters in some menus.
It happens especially with Synaptic but also in some other applications, whereby one gets menus in Belgian mixed with these Russian characters.
Via KDE Language (re)setting things don't get resolved.
Any body any idea ?
Certainly other Belgian users must have the same issue.

Hey all,

thank all of you who tried to come up with a solution.
THE solution was handed over to me by bertrgi on another forum.
I know it is not done to mention the name of different fora and therefore I proposed to bertrgi to post his solution here.
Probably he did not return to this other forum so he missed my message.
If someone is still interested in the solution drop me a mail and I will paste bertrgi's answer.

It's more of a no no to use mail, so please post/paste the answer.

I would certainly be interested to know the solution to this too.
On my system I have the exact same problem, keyboard layout is Azerty BE and system language is US English.
Every application is ok except for Synaptic where I too have menus with Russian text mixed with some English, making Synaptic basically unusable.

Can you please post the solution here?

This is THE solution brought to us by bertrgi ( from an other forum ):
quote

Hi,
Had the same problem and here is how I solved my problem:
- open a terminal
- get root rights (commando: su - )
- write : dpkg-reconfigure locales
(if this doesn't work, first write : apt-get install localeconf the retry reconfigure local)
- in the next menu, unselect everything you don't wish (like by ex. Russian language).
-Reboot the PC (don't know if needed but I did it).
-Problem shoul be solved.

Hope this can help...
Thanks

Unquote

Helping each other helps Linux gaining acceptance

3 questions about locales:

1. Do the ones set w/ dpkg-reconfigure locales in any way affect what characters Konqueror can display?
   I ask because there are times, especially, on the Wikipedia, when some things only display as little rectangles.
   
   
2. In terminals & text editors I use only US English, do I really need 30 others, including:
   Code:

         7 be_BY.UTF-8 UTF-8
        14 en_AU.UTF-8 UTF-8
        15 en_GB.UTF-8 UTF-8
        16 en_IE.UTF-8 UTF-8
        26 ja_JP.UTF-8 UTF-8
        27 ko_KR.UTF-8 UTF-8
        29 pl_PL.UTF-8 UTF-8
        30 pt_BR.UTF-8 UTF-8
        31 pt_PT.UTF-8 UTF-8
        32 ru_RU.UTF-8 UTF-8
        36 zh_CN.UTF-8 UTF-8
        37 zh_TW.UTF-8 UTF-8
   ## created from:  
   # cat -n /etc/locale.gen  | sed -rn '7,/^[ 0-9]{6}\t$/p'  | less

   
   
3. There is no mention of the "C" locale (as in the environment variable "LC_ALL=C"); is it not a real locale, is it built in, or what?