White Mouse Cursors
CONVENTIONS USED

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!


© D. Olson 2001-2003 -- Originally found on The Mandrake eXPerience