HOWTO_Large_Mouse_Cursors

Install Themes

First you must install the cursor theme you want. See the xcursors ebuilds.

Changing Themes

Manual

Edit the ~/.Xdefaults file (create it if it doesn't exist). Then set Xcursor.theme to specify your desired theme name and location. The example uses the gentoo-silver theme:

Xcursor.theme:~/.cursors/FlatbedCursors.Blue.Regular

Gnome

To access the gnome mouse control panel go to System --> Appearance --> Theme --> Customize --> Pointer. At this screen you will be able to select different cursors located in /usr/share/cursors/xorg-x11/.

Gcursor

One way to select a new cursor is with gcursor a graphical interface that previews the cursors and lets you select them. You may have to log out or restart X to get the see the change.

emerge --ask --verbose gcursor

(gcursor:10690): libglade-WARNING **: could not find signal handler 'extract_theme'.

LDFLAGS="-Wl,--export-dynamic" emerge gcursor

Enlightenment

Enlightenment window manager themes have their own cursor images and settings. If you wish to use the system-wide cursor themes such as the Gentoo ones which are standard with the xorg-x11 emerge, the following should work:

Remove the cursor components from your Enlightenment theme. If you are using one of the four standard themes that come with Enlightenment, you may wish to copy the theme into your personal theme directory (~/.enlightenment/themes/) to customise it.

# cd .enlightenment/themes/YOUR_THEME_DIRECTORY
# mv cursors/ ~/
# mv cursors.cfg ~/

This directory and config file may be deleted if it all works, but moving them to your home directory first allows you to move them back if things don't work as you plan.

Then change the cursor as before and restart the X server, and you should have pretty new animated themes!

Large Cursor

Edit ~/.Xdefaults and enter cursor size (24, 32, 48, etc.):

Xcursor.size: 32

The other option is to use large cursor themes in a desktop environment like KDE or GNOME. Under GNOME specifically a good large cursor theme is from the redhat-artwork package. To install:

echo "x11-themes/redhat-artwork cursors" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords
emerge --ask --verbose x11-themes/redhat-artwork