Don't download unnecessary language packs

[catweazel]

I'm doing a reinstall of Mint 14 Cinnamon and had to sit here smoking a pipe for a full 45 minutes while the installer downloaded language packs over the clagged out hinternet.

Surely the downlload could be greatly minimised by asking the user if they want additional language packs.

[Orbmiser]

Yep pissed me off the first time also as only on a 1mb wifi connection.
Someone mentioned to turn off internet while doing the install to bypass that need?
Don't know tho how it's different if then when turning on the internet after installation.
Then still gets those jammed down our throat.

Can anybody Chime In and explain Why in the hell do we need to waste time & bandwidth for languages we will never need?
Or how to disable it?
.

[xenopeek]

I've looked into that in depth for another user; the language packs that are being downloaded are for your selected language only. I traced which files were being downloaded during installation (with sudo ngrep "POST" tcp and port 80), and indeed only language packs for your desktop environment, Firefox, Thunderbird, and such, are being downloaded. And only for one language. The total size of that is a few megabytes. Which however does mean that if the language packs for all 80 or so languages would be included on the ISO, the ISO would be a few hundred megabytes larger. So the balance here is; download a few megabytes during installation, or download hundreds of extra megabytes for getting the ISO?

[catweazel]

the language packs that are being downloaded are for your selected language only.

Thanks for the info. The server must've been hit hard because it was woefully slow.

[xenopeek]

I've seen the same, but I haven't found out what exactly it is doing that causes the language pack download action to take so long. It is really only downloading a few megabytes and if I recall correctly about 12 or so files.