Installation Localization
Localization means making the system speak your language and layout, your keyboard, your language, and your timezone. These three steps set it all up.
Pick the layout that matches your physical keyboard. There are 48 options, including English (US/UK), Dvorak, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, and more.
Each friendly name maps to a standard keyboard code under the hood. A few examples:
| You see | Stored code |
|---|---|
| English (US) | us |
| English (UK) | uk |
| English (US, Dvorak) | dvorak |
| German | de |
| French | fr |
| Spanish | es |
| Russian | ru |
| Japanese | jp106 |
The installer applies the layout to the live environment immediately (rx_set_keyboard_layout), so if you picked right, the keys behave as expected from then on.
Choose the system language. This sets your locale, which controls:
- The language of system messages and applications
- Date, time, and number formatting
- Collation and sorting order
The list is the full set of supported languages (English, French, German, Chinese, and many more). Your choice is stored as <language>.UTF-8, for example en_US.UTF-8, and passed to archinstall for the installed system.
Select your timezone from the full list (for example Europe/Paris, America/New_York, Asia/Tokyo). This sets your clock and is used for:
- Log timestamps
- Scheduled tasks (cron, the daemon)
- The Timeshift backup schedule
- GRUB boot timestamps
The list comes straight from timedatectl list-timezones, so whatever region you see in your installed system is available here too.
- Mirror Regions — where packages come from
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