I recently installed Debian Testing on a new Virtual Machine, and I discovered a major "bug" / unwanted feature:
The installer forces the Region / Timezone you choose to match the Language you choose. IE, if you want to set your region and timezone, to, say, Tokyo Japan, you must select Japanese as your language.
Steps to reproduce:
1. Install Debian Testing with the graphical installer
2. Select English as your language
3. Attempt to select a Region / Timezone with in a non-English speaking country, like Japan
Result:
Installer will complain and instruct you to go back and select a language matching the selected geographical region.
Expected Behaviour:
I should be able to select "English" as my language, and "Tokyo, Japan" as my Region / Timezone and proceed with installation.
Needless to say, this is a narrow minded and unnecessary "feature", and I hope it is very apparent why this would be unwanted by many users.
Debian doesn't make bug reporting easy for the uninitiated, so I require a bit of help. According to https://www.debian.org/Bugs/Reporting I need to include the following:
Edit: Lightened my language, as I did not mean to come across as personally attacking / ridiculing any developers. I'm just surprised to see this kind of behaviour in the installer and felt it is an obviously poor design decision that should be brought to attention.
Pseudo-headers
The first part of the bug report are the pseudo-headers which contain information about what package and version your bug report applies to. The first line of the message body has to include a pseudo-header. It should say:
Package: <packagename> //I don't know what package is responsible. There appears to be a package called "debian-installer": would this be the correct one?
Version: <packageversion> //I have no idea how to even check this, even if I knew the name of the package.
Please include in your report:
The exact and complete text of any error messages printed or logged. This is very important! //There's not really an error per say, so I suppose I can skip this?
Exactly what you typed or did to demonstrate the problem.
A description of the incorrect behavior: exactly what behavior you were expecting, and what you observed. A transcript of an example session is a good way of showing this.
A suggested fix, or even a patch, if you have one.
Details of the configuration of the program with the problem. Include the complete text of its configuration files.
The versions of any packages on which the buggy package depends. //Ummm... Really? Is this necessary in this case? I'm pretty sure the requested information beyond this point is irrelevant, and the unwanted feature is in whichever package is responsible for the debian graphical installer, though I would speculate that it probably extends to the CLI installer as well
What kernel version you're using (type uname -a), your shared C library (type ls -l /lib/*/libc.so.6 or apt show libc6 | grep ^Version), and any other details about your Debian system, if it seems appropriate. For example, if you had a problem with a Perl script, you would want to provide the version of the `perl' binary (type perl -v or dpkg -s perl | grep ^Version:).
Appropriate details of the hardware in your system. If you're reporting a problem with a device driver please list all the hardware in your system, as problems are often caused by IRQ and I/O address conflicts.
If you have reportbug installed the output of reportbug -q --template -T none -s none -S normal -b --list-cc none -q <package> will also be useful, as it contains the output of maintainer specific scripts and version information.