How to convert Windows cursors (.ani) to Linux (Mint/Ubuntu/Debian)

Today I found a really cool cursor featuring Konata from the anime Lucky Star (which, by the way, I haven't seen yet, but I plan to...) and others from Bocchi the Rock (which I have seen and love) created by xian_kuang (It doesn't look animated in the image, but I swear it moves. Click on the link).

The problem is that the format I downloaded was .ani. If you're on Windows, I think it works perfectly and you don't need to do anything else (I haven't tested it, I have to try it on Windows), but I use Linux Mint, so here's how to convert it to a format that Linux Mint can read.

To do this, I need to use Python:

The problem: The managed environment (PEP 668)

In modern distros, you can't just happily do pip install because you could break things, so we're going to use a temporary virtual environment. Or at least that's how it is in Linux Mint (•᷄ᴗ•᷅ ᵕ)

Go to the folder where you have your .ani files and create an isolated “bubble”:

# Create the environment
python3 -m venv venv_temp

# Activate it
source venv_temp/bin/activate

# Install the converter (it will only live here)
pip install win2xcur

Bulk conversion

We're not going to do this one by one. We're going to use the power of the terminal to convert the whole set at once and send it to the cursors folder:

# The -o flag indicates the output folder
win2xcur *.ani -o cursors/

Once the conversion is complete, exit the virtual environment with deactivate and delete it:

deactivate
rm -rf venv_temp

Creating Symbolic Links (Symlinks)

Linux does not recognize names such as Normal or Busy. We need to create symbolic links with names that X11 or Wayland understand. Go to your cursors folder and run these commands:

ln -s Normal left_ptr
ln -s Link hand2
ln -s Working left_ptr_watch
ln -s Busy watch
ln -s Text xterm

(There are more names, but these are the basics to make it work).
Create the index.theme file

For the Linux Mint configuration manager (or any distro) to detect it, create a file called index.theme in the root folder of your cursor:

[Icon Theme]
Name=Name of your Cursor

Done! 🚀

Go to Settings -> Mouse and Touchpad -> Pointer and your new cursor will be there.

If you see that it doesn't apply or only applies halfway, as happened to me, you need to log out and log back into the desktop (in my case, Cinnamon).

Cheers ＼(￣▽￣)／ Nekoprogram 🐾