If I install any cursor theme other than oxygen (or any color variant of oxygen), [almost] all of the themes look messed up. Several of the images will be that of oxygen-black. I believe that it goes to oxygen-black because it is the first "oxygen" in the list. It would go to regular oxygen prior to installing oxygen colors. Things I have tried: I have checked where actual files are located, and they are fine. I have changed the system cursor theme. This does not effect anything. I am using Kubuntu 12.04. However, this is not a new bug. I created a bug report for this about a year ago, but was unable to find it (I am not even sure what forum I used, sorry). That would have been some earlier version of Kubuntu. I have no idea if this effects other distros. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.Install cursor theme. 2.Change the theme. 3.See wierd stuff. Actual Results: As stated, the cursor theme will be a mix of the theme selected, and some version of oxygen. Expected Results: See the selected cursor theme. I see no way of adding a picture (which would explain it better). If I can figure that out, I will add it.
Created attachment 72817 [details] a picture is a thousand words...
Oddly, the "comix cursor theme pack" is uneffected.
Okay, so I have been tinkering and things are a little different than I had at first thought. If you do # update-alternatives --config x-cursor-theme , and pick anything that is NOT oxygen, the cursor themes act normally. If you pick any oxygen cursor theme, they appear like the picture attachment. So the system cursor theme is affecting it somehow. This is, of course, not a solution.
The icon themes that are affected are either not complete or have wrong names for their cursors (the names changed a few years ago). So the system default is taken if no appropriate cursor is found in the theme. The affected themes have to be adjusted by their creators. BTW: Kubuntu seems to use a set of very old cursors (e.g. the oxygen cursor package for 12.04 is from 2010)...
Okay, thanks for the reply. This, however, leaves me with more questions, so please forgive my ignorance. You say the system default is taken if no appropriate cursor is found in the theme. However, all cursors work just fine if I switch the default to something other than anything oxygen. For example, I set the default to dmz black, and then could use any theme without any oddities. So... Why would the system be able to read the file with one default and not the other? Or... Is it the oxygen packages (from 2010) that are not compliant? If this is what you mean, then this would make sense I guess. But, then, this leads me to another question: I have never seen a kde4 distro that uses a default cursor other than oxygen white or black. So ... are there other oxygen cursor packages that other distros use that are MORE up to date? Or, do all distros suffer from this bug/not-a-bug?
Well, I just found this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/oxygencursors/+bug/1033031?comments=all
I am calling this "resolved" as this appears to be an issue with Kubuntu using older packages.