First off, get cursor theme from <a href="http://gnome-look.org/index.php?xsortmode=high&page=0&xcontentmode=36" target="_blank">here. You can download the one of your choice. Now create a directory &#8221;~/.icons&#8221; if it does not exist. Extract the file you just downloaded in this directory. [If you are using GNome then you could have dropped the tar file itself in the Desktop properties window and selected the theme from there. I have since the days of RH9 not used KDE and so am not sure how to do this in KDE, sorry guys.]

Ok, now the interesting part, to get the cursor theme working in your window manager, for that matter any window manager.

The resources in X windows are controlled and decorated by the RESOURCE_MANAGER (for the deeply interested in the internals of X Window, if the name is not appropriate, please excuse me and leave a comment and I will definitely correct it 🙂

So, we want to define our cursor for the X window itself and not depending on the window manager. So, we will create a &#8221;~/.Xdefaults&#8221; file for the same. Here is the content of the file:

Xcursor.theme: ComixCursors-Orange-Small-Slim

Here all the extracter files with the directory called cursors is located in ~/.icons/ComixCursors-Orange-Small-Slim and I want to use the cursors in that directory as my default cursor. Also note that the cursors are named according to the standards, so you do not need to select anything. Good to go now.

Wait, the cursors still do not work. 🙁

Oh well, we need to tell the xrdm, the manager to manage the resources of our changes. So let do it.

xrdb -merge ~/.Xdefaults

We could use, xrdb -load ~/.Xdefaults as well, but that is used to override settings rather than merge them and thus will avoid this for the time being.

Now, lets restart the WM alone and see the cursors in use. If the settings are for other windows like the XTerm or any other terminal or for emacs or so on, you do not need to anything other than invoking the client again, but for cursors, please re-start the window manager.

So, there are actually so many things that you can do with the xrdb that I can keep writing about it, but then there are already so many articles available on the net, why not just refer you to them.

Good Ref:

<a href="https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECN/Support/KB/Docs/UsingTheXdefaultsFil">https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECN/Support/KB/Docs/UsingTheXdefaultsFil

<a href="http://fluxbox-wiki.org/index.php?title=Howto_setup_Xdefaults" target="_blank">http://fluxbox-wiki.org/index.php?title=Howto_setup_Xdefaults

Example: <a href="http://fluxbox-wiki.org/index.php?title=Howto_setup_Xdefaults" target="_blank">http://fluxbox-wiki.org/index.php?title=Howto_setup_Xdefaults

<a href="http://dotfiles.org/.Xdefaults">http://dotfiles.org/.Xdefaults

<a href="http://docs.hp.com/en/B1171-90076/ch05s03.html">http://docs.hp.com/en/B1171-90076/ch05s03.html

<a href="http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xdefaults#Default_settings">http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xdefaults#Default_settings

<a href="http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/systems/topic/com.ibm.aix.baseadmn/doc/baseadmndita/xdefaults_file.htm>http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/systems/topic/com.ibm.aix.baseadmn/doc/baseadmndita/xdefaults_file.htm

<a href=">http://www.tummy.com/journals/entries/jafo_20050120_180533

Related Articles:

• 2010/03/28   Break Free and let firefox remember all the passwords even the ones that are not saved by default
• 2010/03/26   Linux Malware – Proof that Linux is not as secure as we all think
• 2010/03/25   gnome-blog — Deskbar applet for blogging
• 2010/03/24   bash – change theme for gtk in gnome and take screenshot from script.
• 2010/03/23   Add a image to the list of background files in gnome