Force software cursors on nouveau to fix invisible mouse pointer

[stephentaylor-com]

Problem

On systems using the nouveau driver, the mouse cursor is invisible on the physical display under Hyprland. The compositor tracks the pointer correctly (hover, clicks, and hyprctl cursorpos all work) — it simply is never painted, so local users see no cursor.

Root cause

nouveau does not display the DRM hardware-cursor plane on many older NVIDIA GPUs. Hyprland's cursor:no_hardware_cursors defaults to auto, which keeps the hardware cursor plane in use, so the pointer never renders.

This turned up on a 2010 Mac mini (Apple GeForce 320M / MCP89) — a GPU too old for even the legacy nvidia-580xx branch in nvidia.sh, so Omarchy correctly leaves it on nouveau. But nothing then addresses the cursor, so the install boots to an invisible pointer.

Fix

Add install/config/hardware/fix-nouveau-cursor.sh, which detects nouveau as the active DRM driver and appends a software-cursor override to the user's Hyprland config:

hl.config({
  cursor = {
    no_hardware_cursors = true,
  },
})

It writes to ~/.config/hypr/looknfeel.lua — the user override file where Omarchy already keeps cursor settings (see default/hypr/looknfeel.lua) — and is registered in install/config/all.sh right after nvidia.sh.

• Keyed on the active driver, not a GPU-model regex — covers every affected machine rather than just one card. nouveau only ever binds NVIDIA GPUs, so lspci -k | grep -qi 'Kernel driver in use: nouveau' has no false positives.
• Idempotent — guarded on an existing no_hardware_cursors setting, so re-running the installer never duplicates the block.
• lspci is guarded with command -v, and LC_ALL=C keeps the match locale-stable.

Testing

• Detection verified on the affected hardware (Mac mini, GeForce 320M / MCP89): lspci -k reports Kernel driver in use: nouveau and the script fires.
• Against the current looknfeel.lua template, the appended block parses cleanly under luac -p.
• Re-running does not add a second block (idempotency guard).
• bash -n passes.

The underlying one-line setting (no_hardware_cursors = true) was first applied by hand on the affected machine and confirmed to make the cursor visible.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Adds an installer-time hardware workaround to make the mouse cursor visible under Hyprland when running on older NVIDIA GPUs using the nouveau DRM driver (by forcing software cursors).

Changes:

• Add a new hardware config step intended to detect nouveau and apply a Hyprland cursor override.
• Register the new step in the install config pipeline immediately after the existing NVIDIA hardware handling.

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Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 1 comment.

File	Description
install/config/hardware/fix-nouveau-cursor.sh	New hardware-detection script intended to force software cursors under nouveau.
install/config/all.sh	Runs the new fix-nouveau-cursor.sh step during install configuration.

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[stephentaylor-com]

Good catch on the Lua config — you're right. dev has moved the Hyprland setup from .conf to Lua (hyprland.lua → require("hypr.*")), so appending .conf syntax to input.conf would never load.

Rewritten to emit Lua and target ~/.config/hypr/looknfeel.lua, which is where Omarchy already keeps cursor settings (see default/hypr/looknfeel.lua):

hl.config({
  cursor = {
    no_hardware_cursors = true,
  },
})

Verified the generated block parses under luac -p. Also folded in the other two suggestions: guarded lspci with command -v and set LC_ALL=C for a locale-stable match. Thanks!

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 2 comments.

[stephentaylor-com]

Both good catches, thanks.

1. You're right about the transient-nouveau window during install — a supported NVIDIA GPU still runs nouveau until the first reboot, so keying purely on the live driver would wrongly force software cursors there. Added a [[ ! -f /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf ]] guard so the fix only applies when no proprietary driver was configured (i.e. nvidia.sh hit its "no compatible driver" path — exactly the old-GPU / nouveau-forever case this targets).
2. Expanded the header comment to note it writes a Lua hl.config block to ~/.config/hypr/looknfeel.lua.

Validated end-to-end on the affected 320M again: guard passes (no nvidia.conf), fix applies, luac -p clean, idempotent.