Hm, no, gdm is supposed to know both LANG and LANGUAGE, the upstart job explicitly sources /etc/default/locale before launching gdm-binary:
if [ -r /etc/default/locale ]; then . /etc/default/locale export LANG LANGUAGE elif [ -r /etc/environment ]; then . /etc/environment export LANG LANGUAGE fi export XORGCONFIG exec gdm-binary $CONFIG_FILE and this also seems to work here: $ sudo cat /proc/`pidof gdm-binary`/environ | xargs -0n1 | grep ^LANG LANGUAGE=de:en LANG=de_DE.UTF-8 $ sudo cat /proc/`pidof gdm-session-worker`/environ | xargs -0n1 | grep ^LANG LANG=de_DE.UTF-8 LANGUAGE=de:en -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Desktop Bugs, which is subscribed to gdm in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/740754 Title: Language selection for newly created user confusing -- desktop-bugs mailing list desktop-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/desktop-bugs