[Rangi42]

That cursor bug has bothered me on Xubuntu 16.04. I didn't realize how old it was. Is there a workaround besides "awkwardly save your work and restart using the keyboard and an invisible cursor"? (Please nobody say "stop using a mouse"; just try editing graphics without one.)

[Animats]

Yes.

CTL-ALT-F1

CTL-ALT-F7

This takes you from the graphics environment to a full screen text console and back, which re-initializes the graphics environment. It doesn't affect your running applications.

First reported in 2012.[1] Search for "cursor disappears ubuntu" for the long and broad history of this bug. I see there's been progress on the bug report.[2] Unfortunately, fixing it seems to have broken some other things. But after years of complaints and confusion, effort is being put in on it.

Visualize having to explain this to a CFO whom you're trying to convince to use Linux.

[1] http://askubuntu.com/questions/118001/how-to-restart-only-mi... [2] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video...

[EdHominem]

Just today I had Win10 lock up on a brand new surface. None of the inputs did anything, though the screen remained on and the time changed, etc.

Only holding the power button unreasonably long did anything, and that wasn't anything good.

[pasbesoin]

I've found this approach -- to console and back -- useful for clearing other things, e.g. a custom pointer image in Firefox "sticking" upon some combinations viewing/activity.

[Normal_gaussian]

A while ago I moved to Arch Linux and started using the i3, a tiling window manager. This is an unusual setup, and not one everybody likes.

I was surprised at how many GUI bugs there were in the stacks of the mainstream OS's when I had to work on some in the last few weeks.

If you are competent I recommend moving away from xubuntu, or at least its defaults. Take note of the programs you like and install them on the new system, or note the ones you don't and replace them. Swapping wm's is pretty common.

A tiling wm is not for everyone, and my job doesn't involve much mouse work, however when I have had to use GIMP and Inkscape they have worked pretty much perfectly in their fullscreen beauty.

But yeah. Not for everybody.

[S4M]

> (Please nobody say "stop using a mouse"; just try editing graphics without one.)

Actually I had lots of success editing graphics from command line with ImageMagick. Granted there are lots of things that you need a mouse to do but I was surprised how far I could go with just the command line.

[erlehmann_]

A coworker mentioned the cursor bug yesterday; I have never encountered it, but he uses Ubuntu and I use Debian. If you have no need for Ubuntu-specific software, I would suggest to just install Debian Testing, as it is more up-to-date than Ubuntu and does not have this bug.