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Chapter 16. Using langpacks

Langpacks are meta-packages which install extra add-on packages containing translations, dictionaries and locales for every package installed on the system.

On a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 system, langpacks installation is based on the langpacks-<langcode> language meta-packages and RPM weak dependencies (Supplements tag).

There are two prerequisites to be able to use langpacks for a selected language. If these prerequisites are fulfilled, the language meta-packages pull their langpack for the selected language automatically in the transaction set.

Prerequisites

  • The langpacks-<langcode> language meta-package for the selected language has been installed on the system.

    On Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, the langpacks meta packages are installed automatically with the initial installation of the operating system using the Anaconda installer, because these packages are available in the in Application Stream repository.

    For more information, see Checking languages that provide langpacks.

  • The base package, for which you want to search the locale packages, has already been installed on the system.

16.1. Checking languages that provide langpacks

Folow this procedure to check which languages provide langpacks.

Procedure

  • Execute the following command: 

    # yum list langpacks-*

16.2. Working with RPM weak dependency-based langpacks

This section describes multiple actions that you may want to perform when querying RPM weak dependency-based langpacks, installing or removing language support.

16.2.1. Listing already installed language support

To list the already installed language support, use this procedure.

Procedure

  • Execute the following command: 

    # yum list installed langpacks*

16.2.2. Checking the availability of language support

To check if language support is available for any language, use the following procedure.

Procedure

  • Execute the following command: 
# yum list available langpacks*

16.2.3. Listing packages installed for a language

To list what packages get installed for any language, use the following procedure:

Procedure

  • Execute the following command: 

    # yum repoquery --whatsupplements langpacks-<locale_code>

16.2.4. Installing language support

To add new a language support, use the following procedure.

Procedure

  • Execute the following command: 

    # yum install langpacks-<locale_code>

16.2.5. Removing language support

To remove any installed language support, use the following procedure.

Procedure

  • Execute the following command: 

    # yum remove langpacks-<locale_code>

16.3. Saving disk space by using glibc-langpack-<locale_code>

Currently, all locales are stored in the /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive file, which requires a lot of disk space.

On systems where disk space is a critical issue, such as containers and cloud images, or only a few locales are needed, you can use the glibc locale langpack packages (glibc-langpack-<locale_code>).

To install locales individually, and thus gain a smaller package installation footprint, use the following procedure.

Procedure

  • Execute the following command: 

    # yum install glibc-langpack-<locale_code>

When installing the operating system with Anaconda, glibc-langpack-<locale_code> is installed for the language you used during the installation and also for the languages you selected as additional languages. Note that glibc-all-langpacks, which contains all locales, is installed by default, so some locales are duplicated. If you installed glibc-langpack-<locale_code> for one or more selected languages, you can delete glibc-all-langpacks after the installation to save the disk space.

Note that installing only selected glibc-langpack-<locale_code> packages instead of glibc-all-langpacks has impact on run time performance.

Note

If disk space is not an issue, keep all locales installed by using the glibc-all-langpacks package.