xf86-video-intel-2.6.3 and xorg-server-1.6.1 … a big fail

xf86-video-intel-2.6.3 — why do you cause so many problems? Ever since the transition from slow console switching (3 – 5 secs) to fast kernel mode switching (<< 1 sec) you insist on crashing when I kill X.org. Perhaps it's just me — perhaps I'm one of the unfortunate few that cannot have a [...]

Changing the default X11 Cursor

Very trivial.
Unpack your cursor package to ~/.icons/.
The directory structure should be:
~/.icons
~/.icons/theme_name
~/.icons/theme_name/cursors

Create a symbolic link between ~/.icons/default and the theme_name and restart X.
ln -s ~/.icons/theme_name ~/.icons/default

If you have any issues, remove the symbolic link:
rm ~/.icons/default
create a ~/.icons/default directory
mkdir ~/.icons/default
and insert the following file (index.theme) into the ~/.icons/default directory:
touch ~/.icons/default/index.theme
vi ~/.icons/default/index.theme
1 [Icon Theme]
[...]

Using xbindkeys to manage media buttons

More often that not, a keyboard will have extra functionality keys that you can bind to different operations.  Xbindkeys makes it easier to make each key perform a specific task.
First, run “xbindkeys -k” to determine the code for a key.  For example:
“Scheme Command”
m:0×0 + c:160
NoSymbol
Then change the “Scheme Command” section to the command that you [...]

MigrationHeuristic

An interesting discussion on the freedeskop mailing list revealed that setting MigrationHeuristic to “greedy” in the /etc/X11/xorg.conf may speed up Firefox when using the Intel (intel) drivers.
Read the discussion at http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2008-May/035451.html.

Automatically logout after X is killed

Simply alias startx to ‘exec startx’.  For added convience, place it in /etc/bashrc, /etc/zshrc, or /etc/profile.  Note, that if you run ’startx 2>&1 | tee startx.log’, this trick will fail.

Changing The Default X Cursor

Although it took me ages to find out how to change the default X cursor the solution is simple.
1. Install the icon/cursor theme using your default package manager (or extract it to /usr/share/icons)
2. List the contents of your /usr/share/icons directory

~ %  ls /usr/share/icons [truncated output]

Chameleon-Anthracite-Large/    Chameleon-Anthracite-Small/ 
HighContrastLargePrint/         LowContrastLargePrint/  gnome/

3. Copy the name of the cursor theme [...]