Hi,

I am running KDE neon 5.8.7 (LTS).

During the last session during which I could load the desktop GUI, I installed some updates from the software centre. First there was just firefox, and after that it wanted to install some system updates (I don't remember which ones). Then I downloaded Viber for Linux to install, it's a .deb file I installed using QApt. It wanted to install a bunch of dependencies, so I let it.

The updates and the viber install finished successfully, but I noticed some strange behaviour of the Plasma desktop. For example, the quick launch icons for the home folder, konsole, and system monitor I had placed on the task bar disappeared and were replaced by blank "?" icons, and when I clicked on them, I got an error message. Also, when I double-clicked on the shortcut for my Home folder which I had placed on my desktop, I would get an error message and a menu to select which application to open the file with (?).

Since previous desktop misbehaviour was usually solved by rebooting, I rebooted the system. Big mistake.

Now after the splash screen (which shows "KDE neon 5.8.7"), all I get is a blinking text ("_") cursor, and nothing else. This goes on for hours if I let it, just nothing happens.

When I boot into recovery mode, and select "fix broken packages", it identifies a bunch of packages to fix and then wants to download 14.6 MB of data to do so, but cannot since there is not network connection. When I try to select "Enable Networking" from the recovery mode menu, the system just hangs at "[OK] Reached target Sound card." - apparently this is a known bug (enable networking hanging), and I cannot find a solution. If I continue the normal boot or drop to root menu, I cannot enable networking (I tried using /etc/init.d/networking start but ifconfig only shows l0, the local loopback interface, it does not see eth0 or anything like that).

From googling (and a previous similar, but not identical post on this forum) this might be a video driver issue but currently I'm stuck. Any help...please?

Anything is appreciated...many thanks!

So...the lack of internet connection in recovery mode was due to a faulty network cable. Fixed. Now when I say "resume normal boot" in recovery mode I can get a text prompt and a network connection. So I decided to remove the package viber since it seemed to be the cause of the problem, and then there was a bunch of un-needed dependencies and...apt-get seems to have removed the entire plasma desktop. Now when I boot, there is...nothing. It seems like KDE Neon is gone, and just the underlying Ubuntu is left, text mode only. I am rescuing my files right now via a live usb session of KDE Neon, and will reinstall the OS. Pity, as I only installed Neon the first time about 2 weeks ago. Too bad.