Changing the date format in Open Indiana

Sorry if this thread is probably in the wrong place, please move it to the appropriate section.

These days I experiment with some operating systems just for the experience. One of them is Open Indiana which is a fork of Open Solaris. I Googled a few questions and I found some solutions. Too pity Open Indiana doesn't have a nice community like the Ask Ubuntu for Ubuntu where you can find anything. The one thing I couldn't find is how to change the date format in the GUI. During installation I chose US English as the language, and then I found how to add the Greek keyboard layout in order to switch between US and GR when typing. I did found how to change the locale in Oracle Solaris, but this doesn't work in Open Indiana. Googling doesn't help, it only points to the huge documentation (at first page, not even the appropriate chapter) which of course I don't have too much time to read it. A quick look at the documentation wasn't helpful, so please, if anyone is familiar with Open Indiana, how can I change the date format from US (mm-dd-yy) to Greek (dd-mm-yy) either in GUI or Terminal? Ideally I would like the separator to be "/" like dd/mm/yy so the current date should appear as 8/6/2025 (8th of June 2025).

Thank you in advance.

PS: If that makes any difference, the host OS is Windows 11 Pro 24H2 and I run Open Indiana in latest VirtualBox with the VirtualBox Additions and all the updates installed (Open Indiana Hipster 2025.06). I have added all the repositories in case I need to install any application or utility.

One thing I'd consider is whether Open Indiana works like Linux. I boot Linux LiveUSB Ubuntu/Debian drives for various reasons and they always reset the time including the BIOS setting to 1 hour East of 0° Longitude [UTC/GMT], probably because that is where Linux originated. It's similar to a clean install on a new computers of Windows I've done had it's time set to Pacific Time as that's where Microsoft Headquarters is.

Here's the Manual Page explaining date commmands/formats etc in Open Indiana: illumos: manual page: date.1

Taken from Illumos:: maual sections

Good Luck!

OpenIndiana is Unix based so maybe code from MacOS will be useful.

just a thought.
best of luck, Steve ..

LeLibran said:

Here's the Manual Page explaining date commmands/formats etc in Open Indiana: illumos: manual page: date.1

Taken from Illumos:: maual sections

Good Luck!

Click to expand...

Thank you, by typing

date '+DATE:%d/%m/%y'

I get the reply

DATE: 10/6/2025

at the terminal, but I wanted to change the date format in the GUI, at the top right of the taskbar, next to the clock. I found how to make the clock 24h, but there is no control to change how the date appears there.

XxXxX said:

OpenIndiana is Unix based so maybe code from MacOS will be useful.

just a thought.
best of luck, Steve ..

Click to expand...

I used code from Oracle Solaris which is supposed to be the parent OS of Open Indiana and didn't work because the "geniuses" thought it was a good idea to make several changes to the fork making it partly incompatible with the original OS. So I would bet Mac OS code won't work either. Linux code doesn't as well. How difficult it would be to preserve some backwards compatibility? They just don't care about the average inexperienced user. They think everyone using such as OS is a Linux system Administrator. Guess, what? Even an experienced Linux user has some difficulty to adapt. And then they wonder why most people prefer Windows since these OSes are free. Many value ease of use, compatibility and convenience more than something being free and are willing to pay a small price to get it. Let alone the fact that Windows 10 and 11 are free (at least they where some months ago) for a Windows 7 or 8 user.

spapakons said:

Let alone the fact that Windows 10 and 11 are free (at least they where some months ago) for a Windows 7 or 8 user

Click to expand...

Tried that 2 months ago in getting a 2010 Win7 up to Win10, no longer available as a free upgrade.

If you disconnect the internet so it cannot validate online, it will let you upgrade to Windows 10. To activate your can try calling Microsoft and say your old computer died and you transferred the disk because you have a lot of data. They might be kind enough and help you activate. In worst case you buy a new key.