How to make Debian support Chinese

First, you need to generate the data of the following locales:

• en_US ISO-8859-1
• zh_TW BIG5
• zh_TW.UTF-8 UTF-8
• zh_CN GB2312
• zh_CN.GBK GBK
• zh_CN.UTF-8 UTF-8

To do this, you need to enter "dpkg-reconfigure locales" or use Synaptic to reconfigure packages locales (You need to install libgnome2-perl first) ：

1. Select Application > System Tools > Synaptic Package Manager 。
2. Start the Synaptic Package Manager, select package locales, and choose Packages > Configure to reconfigure the package locales.

Select the locale (hold down the Ctrl key to select more then one locale in Synaptic). Choose "None" for the default locale.

The command "locale -a" will list the locales that the system currently supports. You can type the following command to double check if any locale is missing:

$ locale -a
C
POSIX
en_US
en_US.iso88591
zh_CN
zh_CN.gb2312
zh_CN.gbk
zh_CN.utf8
zh_TW
zh_TW.big5
zh_TW.utf8
$

It is best to reboot the whole system after generating locales.

Notice: We don't include the locale zh_HK because its support on X Window is still limited. zh_TW.UTF-8 is a better choice for traditional chinese and zh_CN for simplified chinese.

Installing Free Chinese Fonts

Install the following Chinese TrueType fonts:

• ttf-arphic-bsmi00lp - AR PL Mingti2L Big5 [文鼎PL上海宋], including about 13,000 traditional chinese characters in Big5.
• ttf-arphic-bkai00mp - AR PL KaitiM Big5 [文鼎PL中楷], including about 13,000 traditional chinese characters in Big5.
• ttf-arphic-gbsn00lp - AR PL SungtiL GB [文鼎PL简报宋], including more then 7,000 simplified chinese characters in GB2312.
• ttf-arphic-gkai00mp- AR PL KaitiM GB [文鼎PL简中楷], including more then 7,000 simplified chinese characters in GB2312.
• ttf-arphic-uming - AR PL ShanHeiSun Uni, including more then 20,000 chinese characters in GB2312, BIG5 and some of HKSCS.
• ttf-arphic-ukai - AR PL ZenKai, including more then 20,000 chinese characters in GB2312 and some of HKSCS.

This means typing the following command in the root account:

apt-get install ttf-arphic-ukai ttf-arphic-uming ttf-arphic-gbsn00lp ttf-arphic-bkai00mp ttf-arphic-bsmi00lp