Need help installing new mouse pointer

[Gryphon 2580]

I recently purchased a refurbished laptop on ebay. While I am not an accomplished Linux user and a bit of a noob, everything has been running fine so far, except I can not install a new mouse pointer pack. I've been working on this for 3 days. I have downloaded a pack entitled Gamma.Gold from Pling (https://www.pling.com/s/Cinnamon/p/1171471). It does show up in the Mouse Pointer drop down in the System Settings option box. I can get it to show on my Firefox home screen and, so far, any web page (it is showing now as I write this), however, it goes to another style cursor if I go to any of the LM21 screens, i.e. the panel, menu window, file system, LibreOffice, etc. Obviously, I would like to have just 1 cursor in operation.

WHAT I HAVE DONE/TRIED:

When I received the laptop, it had a different profile installed with a pre-assigned password. I made a new personal profile and deleted the old one.

I have downloaded the cursor pack file, gone into downloads,extracted the .zip file, copied the file to Home/.icons There was no .icons folder, so I made one.

I have copied the unzipped file and gone to File System/usr/share/icons, but when I right click, there is no 'paste to folder'. Show hidden files is enabled.

I have downloaded the file and then clicked 'install' on the pling dowload page.

I have downloaded the install helper programs from OpenDesktop (https://www.opendesktop.org/p/1136805/) and Pling Store (https://www.opendesktop.org/p/1972991)

So I don't know if it is a procedural error on my part, Incompatibility between LM and the cursor because of age, a missing dependency, or that I've tried so many things that I have confused the system!?

I'm really at wits end and could really use some help and detailed instructions.

Thank you for your time and help!

 

[Condobloke]

System/usr/share/icons

Try opening that as root.......right click..open as root

Welcome to Linux.org

 

[Gryphon 2580]

Thank you for the welcome and your reply. I have tried that by opening the download file, cutting and copying the unzipped file, navigating to File System/usr/share/icon by 'opening as root' at the usr file. It stays as root down to icon at which point I click 'paste into file'. Same results-gold cursor works fine on Firefox pages, but reverts to black theme cursor on any LM pages. Please advise if I am committing some error along the way.
Like I said, I got this refurbished and there are several themes that were loaded by the supplier. I'm wondering if I could delete all the previous themes and only leave the 1 cursor as an option? My concern is why does it default to supplied icon only on LM system and would it default to new gold cursor if that is the only choice, or might I wind up with no cursor on LM pages?

 

[Alexzee]

Thank you for the welcome and your reply. I have tried that by opening the download file, cutting and copying the unzipped file, navigating to File System/usr/share/icon by 'opening as root' at the usr file. It stays as root down to icon at which point I click 'paste into file'. Same results-gold cursor works fine on Firefox pages, but reverts to black theme cursor on any LM pages. Please advise if I am committing some error along the way.
Like I said, I got this refurbished and there are several themes that were loaded by the supplier. I'm wondering if I could delete all the previous themes and only leave the 1 cursor as an option? My concern is why does it default to supplied icon only on LM system and would it default to new gold cursor if that is the only choice, or might I wind up with no cursor on LM pages?

Is this a fresh installation of Linux Mint 21 or 22?

It sounds like there is conflict between the LM system's config and what you have in /usr/share/icons/.

Any time that I have downloaded the .tar of the cursor that I wanted from Pling I untarred it in the directory (generally the Downloads directory) I downloaded it to.
Then, I move it from the Downloads directory to the /usr/share directory with root privileges.
Example:

Alex@debmachine:$ cd Downloads:
Downloads: ls
Arch Trix tar.tar.
Arch Trix
Alex@debmachine:$ sudo mv Arch Trix /usr/share/icons/
Alex@debmachine:$

Put a space in between the name of the cursor and the forward slash in front of usr.

Deleting the cursors that came with Mint as default wouldn't fair well until you know what is causing the variance....ie) Firefox using the cursor you moved to the /usr/share/icons directory and than Mint using one of the default cursors.

Like I said, I got this refurbished and there are several themes that were loaded by the supplier.

Some of the themes have control over icons and other attributes tied to it.
At least that's been my experience.

Can you share what themes were in place by the supplier? Too many?
If so we can help you find the directory and show the output from the command line--

 

[Gryphon 2580]

This is a fresh download of LM21.

In terminal I entered -
$ cd Downloads:
It returned - No such file or directory

So I entered :
$ sudo mv Gamma.Gold /usr/share/icons/
It returned - mv: cannot stat 'Gamma.Gold' : No such file or directory

In the Mouse Pointer drop down under System Settings there are:
Breeze - DMZ - Xcursor and a couple of others.

In File System/usr/share/icons there are 100 files such as:
Mint-Y-Blue
Mint-X-
Papirus
Yaru
etc.

Thanks for the help

 

[Alexzee]

This is a fresh download of LM21.

In terminal I entered -
$ cd Downloads:
It returned - No such file or directory

So I entered :
$ sudo mv Gamma.Gold /usr/share/icons/
It returned - mv: cannot stat 'Gamma.Gold' : No such file or directory

In the Mouse Pointer drop down under System Settings there are:
Breeze - DMZ - Xcursor and a couple of others.

In File System/usr/share/icons there are 100 files such as:
Mint-Y-Blue
Mint-X-
Papirus
Yaru
etc.

Thanks for the help

The command-line is showing that Gamma.Gold does not exist.

I would go back to the Pling page and this time download Gamma.Gold to your Downloads directory.
There are '2' Gamma.Gold tarballs on that page. One is Gamma.Gold.1-1.tar.gz and Gamma.Gold.tar.gz.

Untar the Gamma.Gold tarball with Mint's archive manager. Have Mint extract it into the Downloads directory.
Then cd into the Downloads directory.

cd Downloads:
Then type ls at the Downloads: prompt and press Enter. The output should show in the command-line what is in that directory.
Then type:
The exact name of the cursor without the .tar.gz at the end.
sudo mv Gamma.Gold /usr/share/icons/

If Gamma.Gold has been successfully moved to /usr/share/icons with root privileges it should show in your System Settings under Mouse Pointer.

 

[Gryphon 2580]

Alexzee....
I certainly appreciate your patience and persistence with me.
I opened downloads, as root, and deleted all previous versions. Then downloaded 2 new files from Pling. Opened with Archive Manager and extracted into Downloads.
Entered the commands into terminal and received the following. I tried a couple of times.

gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~$ cd Downloads:
bash: cd: Downloads:: No such file or directory
gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~$ cd Downloads
gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~/Downloads$ ls
'Alternate Select.cur'
bronze-hfn-constantine-shadow.crs
bronze-hfn-constantine.zip
Delta-Gold-1_1
Delta-Gold-1_1.tar.tar
Gamma.Gold
Gamma.Gold.1-1.tar.tar
Gold-Dark-Lines-Abstract-Glare-Background-5K-1366x768.jpeg
'Golden-Microscopic-Particles-Spiral-Abstract-Art-5K-Wallpaper-1920x1080-10wallpaper.com(1).jpeg'
light-glitter-glass-Abstract-design-wallpaper-1366x768.jpeg
ocs-url_3.1.0-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb
ProtonMail-desktop-beta.deb
gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~/Downloads$ Gamma.Gold
Gamma.Gold: command not found
gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~/Downloads$ sudo mv Gamma.Gold usr/share/icons
[sudo] password for gryphon777:
mv: cannot move 'Gamma.Gold' to 'usr/share/icons': No such file or directory
gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~/Downloads$ sudo mv Gamma.Gold usr/share/icons
mv: cannot move 'Gamma.Gold' to 'usr/share/icons': No such file or directory
gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~/Downloads$

You mentioned that it needs root privileges, not sure that is happening. Does it happen automatically because I am using terminal?
Seems like I am not understanding what the procedure is and I am not inputting correctly, or something is broken.
Don't know what you don't know.
Thanks again for sticking with me and sharing your time and knowledge!

 

[Alexzee]

Alexzee....
I certainly appreciate your patience and persistence with me.
I opened downloads, as root, and deleted all previous versions. Then downloaded 2 new files from Pling. Opened with Archive Manager and extracted into Downloads.
Entered the commands into terminal and received the following. I tried a couple of times.

gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~$ cd Downloads:
bash: cd: Downloads:: No such file or directory
gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~$ cd Downloads
gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~/Downloads$ ls
'Alternate Select.cur'
bronze-hfn-constantine-shadow.crs
bronze-hfn-constantine.zip
Delta-Gold-1_1
Delta-Gold-1_1.tar.tar
Gamma.Gold
Gamma.Gold.1-1.tar.tar
Gold-Dark-Lines-Abstract-Glare-Background-5K-1366x768.jpeg
'Golden-Microscopic-Particles-Spiral-Abstract-Art-5K-Wallpaper-1920x1080-10wallpaper.com(1).jpeg'
light-glitter-glass-Abstract-design-wallpaper-1366x768.jpeg
ocs-url_3.1.0-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb
ProtonMail-desktop-beta.deb
gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~/Downloads$ Gamma.Gold
Gamma.Gold: command not found
gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~/Downloads$ sudo mv Gamma.Gold usr/share/icons
[sudo] password for gryphon777:
mv: cannot move 'Gamma.Gold' to 'usr/share/icons': No such file or directory
gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~/Downloads$ sudo mv Gamma.Gold usr/share/icons
mv: cannot move 'Gamma.Gold' to 'usr/share/icons': No such file or directory
gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~/Downloads$

You mentioned that it needs root privileges, not sure that is happening. Does it happen automatically because I am using terminal?
Seems like I am not understanding what the procedure is and I am not inputting correctly, or something is broken.
Don't know what you don't know.
Thanks again for sticking with me and sharing your time and knowledge!

You're welcome.

You did this right you just forgot the forward slash that should be in front of the usr directory.
The command-line is case sensitive to say the least.

This is what you ran:

gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~/Downloads$ sudo mv Gamma.Gold usr/share/icons

Try again but this time place the forward slash in front of the usr directory and at the end of the icons directory like this:

gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~/Downloads$ sudo mv Gamma.Gold /usr/share/icons/

 

[Alexzee]

No need to open Downloads as root when just viewing what's in the directory.
You'll need root privileges when it's time to move the cursor theme from the Downloads directory to the /usr/share/icons/ directory.

The more you do stuff with Linux the easier things get.
And, an education too.

 

[f33dm3bits]

If Gamma.Gold has been successfully moved to /usr/share/icons with root privileges it should show in your System Settings under Mouse Pointer.

/usr/share/fonts is normally where the fonts are installed by the packages installed by your package manager. If you are the only one using the fonts, you can also place them in one of your own user directories.

~/.local/share/fonts
~/.fonts

Then run the following the update your font cache.

fc-cache -f

 

[Gryphon 2580]

Alexzee

So I entered the following and received;

gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~$ sudo mv Gamma.Gold /usr/share/icons/
[sudo] password for gryphon777:
mv: cannot stat 'Gamma.Gold': No such file or directory
gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~$ /Downloads$ sudo mv Gamma.Gold /usr/share/icons/
bash: /Downloads$: No such file or directory
gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~$

So I cleared the terminal and went back to the beginning.

gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~$ cd Downloads
gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~/Downloads$ sudo mv Gamma.Gold /usr/share/icons/
[sudo] password for gryphon777:
mv: cannot move 'Gamma.Gold' to '/usr/share/icons/Gamma.Gold': Directory not empty
gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~/Downloads$ sudo mv Gamma.Gold /usr/share/icons/
mv: cannot move 'Gamma.Gold' to '/usr/share/icons/Gamma.Gold': Directory not empty
gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~/Downloads$

On the first try, I thought that there was a space between Downloads$ and sudo. So I tried a second time without, same result.

Perplexing, isn't it?!

Just thinking out loud;
It seems that it is defaulting to a theme and not letting the cursor file go into whatever directory where the System Settings/Themes/Mouse Pointer files are stored. However, it does show Gamma.Gold, the cursor works in Firefox, and I can switch between the other listed pointers. I just don't remember how I got it show in the options box. I've deleted and re-downloaded the file several times, so I wouldn't think something was missing, and I have tried everything with a different package called Delta-Gold with the same results. I've tried to manually drag & drop the files, but Linux isn't having any. Is there some way to reinstall LM21 over the existing version without losing the current settings?
I'm probably way off base and the solution is much simpler. Been here before.
Back to you.

 

[f33dm3bits]

Perplexing, isn't it?!

mv: cannot move 'Gamma.Gold' to '/usr/share/icons/Gamma.Gold': Directory not empty
gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~/Downloads$

Sounds like there is already a directory with that same name and some content already in it.

Just create a directory ".fonts" in your homedir and place them there, much less of a hassle because you won't need to sudo to place fonts in locations where sudo/root is needed.

mkdir ~/.fonts

Then move them there from wherever you have them located.

mv Gamma.Gold ~/.fonts

Then refresh your font cache by running the following.

fc-cache -f

After that you should be able to select them from whatever you need them from under appearance settings of whatever DE you are using.

 

[Gryphon 2580]

I had another thought.....Like I said, when I got this it was set up with another user in place with his password. I set up a new user profile for myself and deleted the old one. Is it possible that the old profile/password is still in place or didn't get deleted?

 

[Gryphon 2580]

f33dm3bits

Thanks, it did create the directory, but it only contains a document labeled .uuid
It didn't move anything.

gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~$ mkdir ~/.fonts
gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~$ mv Gamma.Gold ~/.fonts
mv: cannot stat 'Gamma.Gold': No such file or directory
gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~$ fc-cache ~fonts
gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~$ fc-cache -f
gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~$ mv Gamma.Gold ~/.fonts
mv: cannot stat 'Gamma.Gold': No such file or directory
gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~$

 

[Gryphon 2580]

In the usr/share/icons directory, there are 100 different folders including Gamma.Gold
Does it need to be opened or somehow activated within the directory?

 

[Alexzee]

In the usr/share/icons directory, there are 100 different folders including Gamma.Gold
Does it need to be opened or somehow activated within the directory?

In post # 7 I see that Gamma.Gold and it's tar are without a doubt in your Downloads directory.

I've had trouble with cursor themes before and I dealt with it in 2 ways.
First I would cd into the Downloads directory w/o root privileges and type ls to list in the command-line what's in that directory.

Secondly, becoming root after just having the command line terminal show what's in the Downloads directory then I'd move the cursor theme to the /usr/share/icons/ directory.

And lastly, I would unpack the .tar file in your case (Gamma.Gold.1-1.tar.tar) a second time into the Downloads directory and with root privileges to the /usr/share/themes/ directory.

*To answer your question Gryphon: I'm not running Mint at this time so I'm not sure if opening your /usr/share/icons/ directory (as root) would allow you to set that cursor theme for the whole system or not.

Our member @Condobloke would know the how to on that operation.

 

[Brickwizard]

Haven't time to read all, but did you use the Ubuntu install not windows?

"sudo ./install-ubuntu.sh"

 

[Alexzee]

Sounds like there is already a directory with that same name and some content already in it.

Just create a directory ".fonts" in your homedir and place them there, much less of a hassle because you won't need to sudo to place fonts in locations where sudo/root is needed.

mkdir ~/.fonts

Then move them there from wherever you have them located.

mv Gamma.Gold ~/.fonts

Then refresh your font cache by running the following.

fc-cache -f

After that you should be able to select them from whatever you need them from under appearance settings of whatever DE you are using.

Gamma.Gold is a cursor theme friend from the Pling website for the Cinnamon desktop.

What I don't get @f33dm3bits is the cursor theme (Gamma.Gold) that our op would like to use is already in his Downloads directory. When he moved it to his /usr/share/icons/ directory the Linux Mint Settings MGR should show it.

I've done this hundreds of times on my Debian 12 and Devuan install's and have had success.

 

[Alexzee]

For a sanity check I went back to the Pling page here:

Gamma.Gold

A set of 43 gold-colored 3D mouse cursors for Linux, including all the css3 cursors.To install: extract the files, then run the “install” script which will copy the necessary files to...

www.pling.com

If the install script was ran (which you didn't mention if you had) would then copy the necessary files to “~/.icons/Gamma.Gold” and establish symbolic links to the cursor files.
Then the man explains that it should show in Settings under Mouse Pointer.

I say we see what @f33dm3bits and @Condobloke have to say as this cursor theme is already in your /usr/share/icons/ directory.

IMO, there shouldn't be any confusion as it's in the directory that it should be in.
I'll gladly except correction if I'm mistaken by our brothers mentioned above.

 

[Gryphon 2580]

Deeply appreciate the reply's gentlemen;
Alexzee;
Isn't that what we did in post #7?
Sorry, but are you saying that I need to perform these procedures as root in the command line of terminal. I don't know how to become root in terminal.
If you are talking about the file directory, I've done that several times.

Brickwizard;
No, I had not previously ran the installer command (didn't know about it). However, if you look at the pling page, there is an install button. What I have tried is to download the file, then hit install - seems to download and I presume install the file, except it obviously hasn't worked for me.

Secondly; On pling there is this install helper -

ocs-url

An install helper program for items served via OpenCollaborationServices (ocs://).# How to Install the ocs-urlDownload Linux package under

www.opendesktop.org

which I have downloaded and installed, and isn't helping unless I did/didn't do something.

Thirdly; I entered your command sudo ./install-ubuntu.sh and got this return;

gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~$ sudo ./install-ubuntu.sh
[sudo] password for gryphon777:
sudo: ./install-ubuntu.sh: command not found
gryphon777@amd-ThinkPad-P17-Gen-1:~$

I'm reminded of Edison who when ridiculed for trying 10,000 times to invent the light bulb and failing said; "I've not failed, I've just found 10,000 ways it won't work."

Thanks again guys!