After upgrading to Ubuntu 24, you might find that Vim displays garbled or unreadable Chinese characters.
This issue usually occurs when the terminal encoding and Vim’s internal encoding settings don’t match.
During the upgrade from Ubuntu 22 → 24, the system’s default locale may have been reset to C or POSIX, which are non-UTF-8 environments.
🔍 Step-by-Step Troubleshooting
1️⃣ Check Your Current Locale
Run:
locale
If you see output similar to:
LANG=C
LC_ALL=
then your system is not using UTF-8 encoding.
The expected locale for Ubuntu 24 should look like:
LANG=zh_TW.UTF-8
or at least:
LANG=en_US.UTF-8
2️⃣ Fix the Locale Configuration
If the Chinese locale is missing, install it first:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install language-pack-zh-hant
Then set the system environment:
sudo update-locale LANG=zh_TW.UTF-8
Log out and log back in, or apply it temporarily with:
export LANG=zh_TW.UTF-8
export LC_ALL=zh_TW.UTF-8
✅ Notes
- For English systems, use
en_US.UTF-8instead. - Make sure your terminal emulator (e.g., GNOME Terminal, tmux, or SSH client) is also set to UTF-8 encoding.
- In Vim, confirm the settings:
:set encoding=utf-8 :set fileencoding=utf-8These ensure consistent display and file encoding.
💡 Summary
| Problem | Cause | Solution |
|---|---|---|
| Chinese characters appear garbled in Vim | Locale reset to C or POSIX | Set system locale to zh_TW.UTF-8 |
| Missing language pack | No Traditional Chinese support | Install language-pack-zh-hant |
| Temporary test | Need immediate fix | Use export LANG=... and LC_ALL=... |
In short:
If you see messy characters in Vim or your terminal after upgrading to Ubuntu 24,
reconfigure your locale to UTF-8 and reinstall the language pack.
This should immediately restore proper Chinese display and encoding compatibility.