Ok, I just D/L the newest knoppix dvd iso. I completed the knoppix-installer using debian style config.

All is good, autodetected my windows partition and added it to the grub loader.. all works well.

problem = its all in german !

Don't mis-understand me.. I like the german language, its just that I don't freaking understand it ! hehe

so anyway, how do we change the settings for a US keyboard and US GUI / Terminal interface ?

Simple..

After you are done installing to HDD, and you boot up successfully, open a root terminal (click knoppix penguin on task bar, click Root Shell, type in the root password and youre in.
There are 3 files that you must modify, they are text files in the /etc/sysconfig/2.6.12 directory. You should know how to use the vi editor to do this, otherwise you can use any other editor that you want, but don't try to do it from the gui unless you start the application with root privilidges. Alternatively, you can open a file manager in super user mode... and then you can edit the text files in the gui with root privileges (click the kde menu icon on the left hand side of the task bar > System > More Applications > file manager (super user mode).. and youre in !

the first file is: i18n

modify it to look like this:


Code:
LANG="C"
COUNTRY="us"
LANGUAGE="us"
CHARSET="iso8859-1"
XMODIFIERS=""
next file: keyboard

Code:
KEYTABLE="us"
XKEYBOARD="us"
KDEKEYBOARD="us"
KDEKEYBOARDS="us,fr"

next file: knoppix << This is the most important one !! .. (NOTICE: The entire file is not included in this snippet, only the first few lines that are critical to change the values, do not just copy and paste this and over-write the original file because you'll damage the configuration .. just replace each of these lines over the ones in your actual file).


Code:
LANG="C"
COUNTRY="us"
LANGUAGE="us"
CHARSET="iso8859-1"
KEYTABLE="us"
XKEYBOARD="us"
KDEKEYBOARD="us"
KDEKEYBOARDS="us,fr"
DESKTOP="kde"
TZ="America/New_York"

Ok, now you are done modifying the files... save and close everything, and reboot the system.

You should now have everything in english, even firefox and Gaim, and even the terminal interface and manual pages will be in english !


ENJOY !!!!!!!!!!!

:P