Here's the sequence of events since I don't know what is the root cause.

-VLC stared acting up. Playing a video would cause the system to grind to a halt and become unresponsive until logging out and back in again.
-I decided to purge VLC and re-install it fresh.
-After purging VLC Things like desktop surch stopped working. I couldn't even log out with the GUI.
-I did a "sudo shutdown now" from tty1".
-Now when I boot back up this is what my login screen looks like. I can enter my password but tty7 becomes unresponsive after I hit the enter key.
-I can still login to the command line form tty1-6 but that doesn't help me get to my desktop.

I'm on Neon User edition.

Please help.

Picture here:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/1Sw6LKBdCikUKvYI3
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ADDITION:
The solution was to reinstall "neon-desktop".

Code: Select all

sudo apt install neon-desktop

Answer provided by +Charles Wright On Google+