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1

I have recently taken the plunge to Ubuntu, and purchased the Dell XPS 13 Developer Edition. My first order of business was to wipe the "Dellbuntu" that came pre-installed and do a fresh install of 15.04. After some minor hiccups and googling I had a working installation of 15.04 for about a day. Then I was prompted to install some updates via the built in update manager and everything installed correctly, but I needed to reboot. Now, upon rebooting, and selecting my distro in GRUB, I am greeted by many lines of scrolling text, all prefaced with the green [OK] tag, except the last one which reads:

Starting Light Display Manager ... and deal with any system changes ..

Upon which the boot hangs with a flashing underscore, and never moves.

How can I fix it?

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Any chance you could take a photograph of your screen and upload that here? It might be useful to see the previous error messages, although my guess is that a more serious error message (ending in "and deal with any system changes ..") that is being partially obscured by the "Starting Light Display Manager ..." message. Also: you're not the only one with this error! --> askubuntu.com/questions/636524/… – Gaurav Jun 25 '15 at 18:21
up vote 8 down vote

Try to go to tty1 (Ctrl+Alt+F1)

Login and purge xorg and lightdm

sudo apt-get purge xorg lightdm

Autoremove whatever's left

sudo apt-get autoremove

Install lightdm and xorg

sudo apt-get install xorg lightdm
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When apt refuses to install the packages because you have held packages you can do as follows (this is what I've did): sudo aptitude -f install xorg lightdm ubuntu-desktop It will tell you a little bit more than apt. Do not use the solutions to hold the XServer-*LTS packages. (Try other options) And choose do install X-Server-Core (yes the new one) ´sudo service lightdm restart´ or reboot (I got exactly this problem. In the first place I was afraid by removing X-Org LightDm because it will remove ubuntu-desktop too but mow all is up and running again) (improve answer did not work) – wstein Sep 22 '15 at 18:00
    
After 2 sleepless days, this surprisingly saved me. Thanks !! – Ashok Raj Nov 10 '16 at 20:25
    
did that & did apt-get update/upgrade. after that, 500 MB were downladed and now my entire operating system changed: from xubuntu to ubuntu. LOL – Blauhirn Nov 23 '16 at 0:42
up vote 0 down vote

There is an easier solution I think.
Try from client ctrl-alt-f2 (F1 might not work, as it is trying to boot)

Then run 

sudo dpkg --configure -a
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up vote 0 down vote

If you have recently installed Nvidia Drivers, try removing them

Try to go to tty1 (Ctrl+Alt+F1)

  1. Find all Nvidia packages installed

    apt list --installed | grep nvidia

    ex: there is a package named nvidia-352

  2. Remove the packages found like

    sudo apt-get remove --auto-remove nvidia-352

  3. After the removal is complete, try booting again to your Ubuntu system.

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