Disappearing Mouse Cursor

2009-10-01 10:23 - Linux

For a little while now, I've had my mouse cursor sporadically appear and disappear. Before long, I noticed it was happening when I would have expected an "hourglass" cursor. A series of searches (eventually, "ubuntu hourglass cursor disappear") led me to an Ubuntu Forums post: Re: Gutsy Gibbon (xubuntu): Mouse cursor disappears!!. I'm actually running Ubuntu Hardy, but the issue was the same:

The problem with animated mouse cursors disappearing (like the loading cursor in Firefox) is described here [beryl-project.org]. Apparently the 'Scale the mouse pointer' and 'Hide original mouse pointer' options of the Enhanced Zoom plugin from Compz Fusion work by changing the size of the cursor to 1x1. After zooming out the static cursors are restored, but the animated are not. This is also why the bug appears so random. It only occurs after the first usage of the zoom function.

The solution is to disable the options mentioned above, and probably use the 'Sync Mouse' option, log out and log back in. The size of the cursor will now always stay the same, but it will also not disappear anymore.

The various pieces of Linux/Ubuntu/Gnome/Compiz apparently don't work together so well. Disabling those options, then logging out and back in, fixed my busy cursors. But the whole zoom plugin failed to work properly anymore, so I've just disabled it completely.

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