(Writing on my phone, so I can't format everything properly. Sorry for that.)
I followed the steps over here to change my locale: https://superuser.com/questions/149475/start-the-week-on-monday-in-the-clock-applet-in-ubuntu/149484#149484
Except there was no en_US.utf8 directory in /usr/lib/locale.
After doing so, I restarted Ubuntu only to realize that the boot process wouldn't finish anymore. The boot screen just keeps on loading but nothing happens. During this, opening tty didn't allow me to log in since the prompt never appeared.
Eventually I booted into recover mode, dropped into root shell and modified /etc/default/grub to use nomodeset for that one parameter. I ran update-grub after that.
This resulted in me being able to reach the login screen again. Where I'm now stuck in a login loop. Opening tty works now, so I logged in. There I'm presented with an error:
Could not find platform independent libraries Could not find platform dependent libraries Consider setting $PYTHONHOME to [:] Fatal Python error: Py_Initialize: Unable to get the locale encoding ImportError: No module named 'encodings'
So. I tried the steps suggested here https://askubuntu.com/a/223634/337853 to resolve the login loop, but they didn't work.
What can I try now?
Notes
- Removing nomodeset from the grub configuration throws me into unbootable state again. No tty login prompt there.
- I can't seem to connect to the Internet or network (cable is plugged in) in order to reinstall things.