Nov 2, 2026 4:57:01 AM Greg Wooledge <[email protected]>: > > On Sun, Nov 01, 2026 at 23:25:25 -0800, Donald MacDougall wrote: >> After that when I started it up again, logged in and typed 'startx', >> instead of seeing the normal desktop, all I see is a black screen with a >> mouse >> cursor in the middle which I can move around at will but it does nothing. > >> I'm on Wayland obviously with lightdm > > If you run startx, you are starting an X session, not a Wayland > session. It sounds like your X session isn't starting your window > manager, or else your window manager isn't configured to show anything > by default. > The reason I thought it obvious is that I'm using systemctl commands which I thought to be Wayland commands. If I am wrong about that then when I look at syslog a large proportion of the lines at startup and shutdown are systemd such as:
systemd [1]: Started cups.service - CUPS Scheduler. If I was mistaken that these were indications that I am using Wayland then I stand corrected. > Also, if you ran startx, your session is *not* under the control of > lightdm. startx is an alternative way of starting an X session. > The way I have operated all my Linux computers since I first converted to Linux back around 1999 +/- a little is to boot to a terminal login prompt, login as my own username. When I first decided to try a DE and chose xfce and began to install it I found that often something would be wrong with the display that would make it unusable and so it would be easier to troubleshoot if I started it from the command prompt after having logged in than to have it run at startup. I ran several servers (email, Apache, etc.) and never ran any desktop environment on them. But on my own desktop computers I wanted to use word processors and such so xfce became more and more an everyday thing, but I've always run it by first logging in, then typing "startx" at the command prompt. When debian began to make Wayland the default DE I went with the default and never found any reason to change back. Or so I thought. > I don't even know whether lightdm can start a Wayland session, or if > it's only capable of starting X sessions. Also the returned message when I run the command "systemctl status lightdm" as you suggested below is: lightdm.service - Light Display Manager Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/lightdm.service; enabled; preset: enabled) Active: inactive (dead) Docs: man:lightdm(1) > So, we have two (or more) different ways we can approach this. My > first inclination would be to see whether startx can be made to work > at all. Try running: > > startx startxfce4 > This command results in 14 lines of output: X.Org X Server 1.21.1.16 followed by 12 lines which are far to much for me to copy over to my phone character by character but none being an error message followed by one line: "waiting for X server to shut down (II) Server terminated successfully (0). Closing log file ... etc" then back to the command prompt. This command clearly started an X Server which then immediately shut down. > If that works, then we know X sessions work, and that XFCE works if > invoked as the X session manager. You can make this your default > session manager by editing or creating the ~/.xsession file and > putting: > > exec startxfce4 > > inside it. Also, if you happen to have a ~/.xinitrc file, you should > probably rename that (or merge its contents into ~/.xsession) so that > it doesn't interfere. > > In theory, lightdm should also respect the ~/.xsession file, and launch > XFCE for you after you login, assuming lightdm is configured to start > an X session. Neither .xinit nor .xsession files exist. > If you expected lightdm to run at boot time, then we might also want > to check on that service. I would start with something like: > > systemctl status (lightdm > > and see if that has any error messages that you can work on. If it > got disabled somehow, then maybe this) would work: > > systemctl enable lightdm > systemctl start lightdm When I ran systemctl it said, as I quoted above, "enabled" but then "inactive (dead) whatever that means. > Although I don't understand why it would have been disabled, unless > you typed or pasted something as root by accident. > All I did after typing 'startx' (as me, not root) resulting in the black screen was press ^Alt and the first 6 function keys none of which did anything at all followed by Fn Alt and the function keys which also had no effect, then I quick tapped the power key. That caused a normal shutdown with a rapid scrolling up the screen of the normal shutdown messages and then the computer powered off.
