The single-pixel-width cursor / caret in Gedit (and other text editor boxes in Ubuntu) is pretty thin and hard to see:
I like the block cursor used in the standard terminal, however:
Is there a way to adjust the Gedit typing cursor to be a thicker line, or a block, or a horizontal underbar, or something easier to see? I would like to do this while still maintaining the standard "insert text here" behavior of the bar; I do not want to overwrite text.
(I believe both "cursor" and "caret" are sometimes used to refer to the text insertion point.)
you can switch off your Numeric keypad (the numbers on the right-hand side of your keyboard) and press zero for switching between the two modes
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karim
However, changing the cursor this way switches from "insert" to "overwrite" mode. That is, if the cursor is on top of a letter (say "b"), and you type "a" then b will be replaced by a, rather than inserting a before b, which is normal when the cursor is thin. Since you do not mention this important point I will vote this answer down.
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user68186