Change the default codepage from latin1 to utf8 on a linux machine

Question

How can I change the default codepage/charset on a linux system from latin1 to utf8? I need to do this on two systems, one is running Ubuntu and the other Debian.

Answer 1

Edit /var/lib/locales/supported.d/local and add your locale to the list of supported locales if it isn't there already, eg:

en_US UTF-8

Regenerate the supported locales on your machine:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

Open /etc/default/locale and check if LANG and LANGUAGE are changed:

LANG="en_US"
LANGUAGE="en_US:UTF-8"

if they are not, you can manually update them now.

reboot.

Answer 2

If you also need to switch latin1 encoded filenames to utf-8, use convmv (apt-get install convmv):

convmv -f latin1 -t utf8 -r /path/to/files

This will only show what it would do. Add the --no-test option to actually do it.