How to install the Oreo Cursors theme pack on Linux
Let’s face it; the default cursor themes for most Linux desktop environments are pretty boring. Thankfully, the Oreo Cursors theme pack exists. It’s a Google Material Design take on the mouse cursor, and it’s beautiful. In this guide, we’ll go over how you can replace the bland, existing Linux cursor theme with Oreo Cursors.
Downloading the Oreo Cursors pack on Linux
The Oreo Cursors pack is available on Gnome-look.org, a popular themeing website for Linux users. To install the cursor theme pack on your computer, you will need to download it from this website. To download it, head over to the Oreo Cursors Gnome-look.org page. Then, click on the “Files” tab.
Inside of the “Files” tab, there is an impressive amount of cursor themes to download. Oreo spark pink, Oreo Spark orange, Oreo, teal, and so on. Look through the long list of cursors and find the one you want to use on your computer. Keep in mind; it is possible to install more than one cursor theme on your Linux PC, so feel free to download as many as you want.
To download an Oreo cursor theme on your computer, do the following. First, locate the theme file you wish to grab from the list in the “Files” tab. Then, go to the “DL” tab next to the cursor theme you want and click on the blue icon. After clicking on the blue icon, a pop-up window will appear on the screen. Click on “Download” to grab your Oreo Cursor theme.
Extracting the Oreo Cursors pack on Linux
There are a whopping 19 variations of the Oreo Cursor theme available for download. Each one of these downloadable theme files is distributed in the TarGZ file format. TarGZ is a type of archive; the contents of the archive must be extracted before the theme files can be installed on Linux.
To extract the contents of your Oreo Cursors archive, launch a terminal window on the Linux desktop. After that, follow the command-line installation instructions outlined below that corresponds with the theme you want to extract.
Note: be sure to enter the downloads directory using the CD command.
cd ~/Downloads
oreo_spark_pink_cursors.tar.gz
tar xvf oreo_spark_pink_cursors.tar.gz
oreo_spark_orange_cursors.tar.gz
tar xvf oreo_spark_orange_cursors.tar.gz
oreo_spark_lite_cursors.tar.gz
tar xvf oreo_spark_lite_cursors.tar.gz
oreo_spark_lime_cursors.tar.gz
tar xvf oreo_spark_lime_cursors.tar.gz
oreo_spark_light_pink_cursors.tar.gz
tar xvf oreo_spark_light_pink_cursors.tar.gz
oreo_spark_violet_cursors.tar.gz
tar xvf oreo_spark_violet_cursors.tar.gz
oreo_spark_green_cursors.tar.gz
tar xvf oreo_spark_green_cursors.tar.gz
oreo_spark_red_cursors.tar.gz
tar xvf oreo_spark_red_cursors.tar.gz
oreo_spark_dark_cursors.tar.gz
tar xvf oreo_spark_dark_cursors.tar.gz
oreo_spark_purple_cursors.tar.gz
tar xvf oreo_spark_purple_cursors.tar.gz
oreo_spark_blue_cursors.tar.gz
tar xvf oreo_spark_blue_cursors.tar.gz
oreo_purple_cursors.tar.gz
tar xvf oreo_purple_cursors.tar.gz
oreo_pink_cursors.tar.gz
tar xvf oreo_pink_cursors.tar.gz
oreo_blue_cursors.tar.gz
tar xvf oreo_blue_cursors.tar.gz
oreo_teal_cursors.tar.gz
tar xvf oreo_teal_cursors.tar.gz
oreo_grey_cursors.tar.gz
tar xvf oreo_grey_cursors.tar.gz
oreo_red_cursors.tar.gz
tar xvf oreo_red_cursors.tar.gz
oreo_white_cursors.tar.gz
tar xvf oreo_white_cursors.tar.gz
oreo_black_cursors.tar.gz
tar xvf oreo_black_cursors.tar.gz
Once the files are extracted from the TarGZ archive, it’ll appear in your downloads folder. From here, move on to the next section of the guide.
Installing the Oreo Cursors pack on Linux
Although cursor themes sound different, they’re actually just icon packs for your mouse. As a result, they are installed in the icons directory much like an icon theme file is. In this guide, we’ll go over two different ways of installing the cursor themes. The first method of installation is known as “single-user,” and it allows only the user who sets up the theme access to it. The second method of installation is system-wide, which allows any user on the system access to the theme, even if they haven’t installed it themselves.
Single-user
To set up the Oreo Cursors theme files in single-user mode, start out by launching a terminal window on the Linux desktop. Once the terminal window is open, use the CD command to move the terminal session to the “Downloads” directory.
cd ~/Downloads
Using the mkdir command, create a new folder in your home directory. This folder is known as “.icons” and will hold the cursor theme files.
mkdir -p ~/.icons
After creating the new folder, use the mv command and place the Oreo Cursors theme files into the ~/.icons directory.
mv oreo_*/
System-wide
To install the Oreo Cursors theme pack in system-wide mode, launch a terminal window on the Linux desktop. Once the terminal window is open, use the CD command to move the terminal session from the home directory (~) to the “Downloads” directory where the theme files are.
cd ~/Downloads
From here, use the sudo -s command to elevate the terminal window to root access.
sudo -s
Now that the terminal session is logged into root move the theme files into /usr/share/icons/ using the mv command.
mv oreo_*/ /usr/share/icons/
Activate an Oreo Cursors on Linux
The Oreo cursor theme is set up on your Linux PC. Now all that is left is to switch the current mouse theme to Oreo. To do that, check out the list of links below, and click on the one for the desktop environment you use, as it will help you learn how to configure the cursor theme settings.
