As a dirty workaround, I've created a script: /etc/X11/Xsession.d/39-lightdm-dmrc-fix (runs just before xsessionrc parsing) ------- #!/bin/bash TEMPLANG=$(cat "$HOME/.dmrc" | grep ^Language= | cut -d '=' -f 2 | sed 's/utf8/UTF8/') [ ! -z "$TEMPLANG" ] && export LANG=$TEMPLANG -------