How many people are out there who prefer the white mouse cursor over the black ones?
I know I do, and so do most people. Here's how to do it.
First, open up a console. Next type in
su and hit
Enter. Put in
the root password and hit
Enter.
Type in
cd /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/ and hit
Enter. This will switch
you to the proper directory that contains the cursors.
Type in
mv cursor.pcf.gz blackcursor.pcf.gz and hit
Enter. This will
rename the black cursor package so you will know which is which.
Next, type in
wget http://www.hut.fi/u/pvsavola/files/cursor.pcf.gz and
hit
Enter. This will download the white cursors package into this directory.
Note that in the event that the above link is broken, I have the file hosted locally as well.
You could get it from here by issuing the command
wget http://mdkxp.by-a.com/rpm/cursor.pcf.gz.
Once this is done, type in
mv cursor.pcf.gz whitecursor.pcf.gz and hit
Enter.
This will rename the new white cursor package so that you know which is which.
Now that you have both cursor packages on your computer, you can choose which one you want.
For this tutorial, we will now try the white cursors.
Type in
ln -s whitecursor.pcf.gz cursor.pcf.gz and hit
Enter. This creates
a symlink to the white cursor package. Now, restart X if you know how, or just restart your
computer. When you start it up again, X will be using white cursors!
To get the black cursors back, open a terminal and switch to root, then change to the proper
directory, just as you did above. Then, type in
rm -f cursor.pcf.gz and hit
Enter.
This deletes the symlink to the white cursors.
Next, type in
ln -s blackcursor.pcf.gz cursor.pcf.gz and hit
Enter. The symlink
now points to the black cursor package, and when you restart X (or your computer) you will have
the black cursors back.
That's all there is to it!
Note that if you want a cursor editor, so you can make your own cursors, you should go and visit
psi's site for DeCurs at
http://www.hut.fi/u/pvsavola/decurs.html.
This is where I found the white cursor file from originally, but I had lost the URL. Thanks go to
the guys on the PCLinuxOnline message boards for locating it again!