Shot in the dark - what happens if you disable gdm, then use a tty to start X yourself, effectively bypassing gdm?
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From: wlug-bounces(a)mail.wlug.org <wlug-bounces(a)mail.wlug.org> on behalf of Richard Klein <rich(a)richardklein.org>
Sent: Sunday, March 18, 2018 11:13:30 AM
To: Worcester Linux Users Group
Subject: [Wlug] Kali Linux/GDM3 display manager
I'm running Kali, which is based on Debian. Recently, after some updates, the computer would only boot to a text prompt; no GUI. I found that, somehow, I had a more recent version of a Gstreamer-plugins library than GDM3 could run on. I removed the library, then re-installed GDM3, letting it choose whatever libraries it depended on. That worked, to a point. It boots to the GUI now, and gives me a login prompt. I enter my username and password successfully, but then I get a solid-color background, a mouse cursor, and nothing else; no icons, no status bars, no menus, no apparent response to mouse clicks.
My guess is I still need to re-install something else that runs on top of the display manager, but I don't know what. Any ideas?