It seems that /etc/locale.conf is ignored in Centos 7.
As a traditionalist who prefers things sorted lexicographically rather than indiscriminately with case ignored and dates to be displayed in the form "Sep 11 2008", I have always added lines to this file:
$ cat /etc/locale.conf LANG="en_US.UTF-8" # Fix collating sequence for sort and ls export LC_COLLATE=C # Fix time format in ls -l to Sep 11 2008 export LC_TIME=C
and it's always worked - in UNIX, all Fedora's, Centos 6 (I think). Now, in a fresh installation of Centos 7 (virtual, kvm) these exported environment variables are nowhere to be seen.
If I manually type export LC_COLLATE=C in an xterm, sorting works "properly" again.
Why is /etc/locale.conf ignored in Centos 7 - and not in Fedora 20?
While it shouldn't matter, I'll mention that I'm running Xfce4 with mostly xterm windows - where the LC_COLLATE and LC_TIME variables are absent from `env`. However, if I revert to a non-X console (CTL-ALT-F2), these variables are present.
So, /etc/locale.conf isn't totally ignored. Perhaps xterm, or Xfce4, or that whatever it is awful undocumented GUI thing that starts X, has simply forgotten the concept of "export".