I am probably very late to the party, but some days ago I was surprised to realize that the standard Plasma Breeze mouse cursor has been changed in Plasma 6 Dev…
Before I write anything more I want to make it clear that I don’t want to discredit the work and time someone has put into this in any way!
And that I know that different people have different taste.
Here is a screenshot-comparison of the mouse cursors from Plasma 4, Plasma 5 and Plasma 6 Dev (the latter ones were taken from KaOS):
My critical opinion:
I think it is no good decision to change the very unique outer shape of Plasma’s default mouse cursor…
One can distinguish the Plasma 5 Breeze and Plasma 4 Oxygen mouse cursors from e.g. Windows’, macOS’ or any other Linux DE’s by their shape at once. The new Plasma 6 Dev Breeze cursor not so much.
As small as it is, the mouse cursor is one of the things the user is inevitably and permanently being confronted with in a desktop environment.
At least for me the unique shape of “our” cursor has always been something I associated with KDE Plasma - it has been much more of a “branding” for me than for example the official Plasma 4/5 Desktop logos (the “cashew” with the three “dots” and the “bracket” with the three “dots”).
And even some Windows users have identified the Plasma 5 Breeze mouse cursor as “the Linux cursor” in my presence (this was not on my computers and in some cases the cursor was not even used in Plasma but in other DEs…).
Changing the mouse cursor’s colours is another cup of tea entirely IMHO.
This already has been done from Plasma 4 to 5 / Oxygen to Breeze for good reason (but the outer shape had been preserved!) and though the colours are not that important to me I indeed do understand why this has happened in Plasma 6 Dev.
Yes, I know that I will be able to change the mouse cursor to one of my liking, but I think the important part is with what cursor the user is confronted by default…
What do you think?
PS: I am sorry if this already has been discussed somewhere, but I was not able to find anything.