You don’t have to install theme packages, engines or extra apps. All you need is already on your Debian system:
# update-alternatives --config x-cursor-theme There are 2 choices for the alternative x-cursor-theme (providing /usr/share/icons/default/index.theme).
Selection Path Priority Status ------------------------------------------------------------ * 0 /usr/share/icons/DMZ-White/cursor.theme 90 auto mode 1 /usr/share/icons/DMZ-Black/cursor.theme 30 manual mode 2 /usr/share/icons/DMZ-White/cursor.theme 90 manual mode
Press enter to keep the current choice[*], or type selection number: 1 update-alternatives: using /usr/share/icons/DMZ-Black/cursor.theme to provide /usr/share/icons/default/index.theme (x-cursor-theme) in manual mode.
If you’re not using Debian, it seems the way to go is to follow /usr/share/icons/default/index.theme with the following:
[Icon Theme]
Inherits=DMZ-Black
Either method sets the cursor theme systemwide through Xorg itself. To set it for a single user, add the following to ~/.Xdefaults:
Xcursor.theme: DMZ-Black
Xcursor.size: SIZE #optional
In my own case, I was using the the DMZ-Black theme on GTK applications, but Qt3/Qt4 applications (Amarok 1.4, Clementine, Skype, KeepassX) had the mouse pointer switch to DMZ-White when it entered their windows. Nothing that would cause trouble, but annoying if you want a consistent look across your environment.
As said before, this avoids unnecesary cruft on your system and works for all desktop environments you might have on your system.
Tips grabbed from here.