Installing X11 Cursor Themes in Debian

I couldn't find a tutorial on how to do this so I figured it out on my own and decided to write up a simple how-to for anyone else who wants to know how to change their X11 cursor theme. This is a system-wide effect and includes GDM. I do not know how to let each user have their own cursor theme.

This is obviously for Gnome since that's the default desktop environment in Debian. It very well may work for KDE. The default cursor used is named Industrial.

1) Find an X11 cursor theme that you want to use at gnome-look.org. Save it to a temporary location.

2) Extract the files according to the following hierarchy (if the cursor theme's author has any sense it will already be done this way):

theme name
- index.theme
- cursors
  - cursor files

3) Open up a terminal and move the cursor theme directory to /usr/share/icons as a super user.

su
mv /usr/share/icons

4) Open up the default theme configuration file (still as a super user).

gedit /usr/share/icons/default/index.theme

Look for the line "Inherits=Industrial" and replace "Industrial" with the name of the cursor theme that you moved over in step 3. Save the file when done.

5) Reboot. GDM and every user should be using the newly installed cursor theme.