I seem to have stumped with this same problem: after I provide the password for my username, all I see is the background image and the desktop environment is not fully loaded (no destkop icons, no panels); keyboard shortcuts do work, though.
Using a keyboard shortcut, I could start an xterm and then called the gnome-session command, which caused the desktop icons to appear, but not the panels. I could see, however, some error messages from gnome-session related to the window manager and the panels. So, I restarted into a recovery mode prompt and executed # apt-get purge gdm3 metacity then rebooted to a normal session (to gain access to the network), and reinstalled gdm3 and metacity with $ sudo apt-get install gdm3 metacity I noticed that caused several dependencies to be downloaded and installed. This was strange, because the purge I just executed only removed the gdm3 and metacity packages. Anyway, I rebooted after installation finished and this time I got the desktop session to work again. $ dpkg --list gdm3 Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold | Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend |/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad) ||/ Name Version Description +++-==============-==============-============================================ ii gdm3 2.30.5-10 Next generation GNOME Display Manager -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
