I've been using Neon User edition for 6 months. When I restarted today, all I get is a black screen with mouse pointer. I don't get the login screen. I'm guessing this is because of a failed/partial update.
I tried ctrl-alt-f1 and ctrl-alt-f7. All that does is remove the mouse pointer. I can't get to a terminal with those commands.
Are there any other options besides reinstalling from a USB drive?

Razer Blade 15 laptop
Dual boot with Windows
Partitions:
/ 37.25 GiB
swap 22.35 GiB
/home 177.38 GiB

Boot into TextMode:
In GrUB-BootMenu-Entry, add to linux-kernel line:

("systemd.unit=" Docu:
https://manpages.debian.org/stretch/sys ... .1.en.html)

("multi-user.target" Docu:
https://manpages.debian.org/stretch/sys ... .7.en.html)

systemd.unit=multi-user.target


If You get readable text, then update via command-line from there:
$ sudo pkcon refresh
$ sudo pkcon update

Then, reboot:
$ sudo reboot

Thank you for this valuable information.

I was a little panicked b/c this is my current work machine. I still have my company supplied Windows workstation, so I was able to continue working.
After some more thought and reading your reply, I realized there is a recovery option in my grub menu. I tried the dpkg option, and saw a message about not enough space. I was concerned when this issue started that it might be a full root partition.
I used the clean option in the grub recovery menu. That booted me into the log-in screen. I rebooted, and now I'm back in my Plasma environment. According to KDE partition manager, I have 9 GB free in root.
I ran pkcon refresh and pkcon update to make sure there were no partial updates. I was down to 8 GB free in root.
I ran docker system prune which reclaimed 4.5 GB. I relaunched partition manager and see that it freed it from the root partition. I don't know why, but I didn't expect docker to use root.

I will need to shrink home and resize root, probably by 20GB. Or, it's time to upgrade to a 1TB drive.

In the meantime, I'm off to donate to KDE for their awesome software. Days like today remind you how much you rely on, and enjoy KDE.

To possibly free some more disk-space, do:

$ sudo apt autoremove

If your filesystem-type is 'btrfs':

Remove older snapshots.

Hi, I have this exact same problem after installing for the first time today. The live USB worked flawlessly.

I tried to "boot into text mode" but maybe I don't understand. I managed to get to the grub prompt but I don't know how to edit as suggested in this thread. Maybe that isn't even what was meant.

I have an HP Pavilion dv7
I made the / partition ext4 and /home btrfs before intalling.

jshirk wrote:Hi, I have this exact same problem after installing for the first time today. The live USB worked flawlessly.

I tried to "boot into text mode" but maybe I don't understand. I managed to get to the grub prompt but I don't know how to edit as suggested in this thread. Maybe that isn't even what was meant.

I have an HP Pavilion dv7
I made the / partition ext4 and /home btrfs before intalling.

Hi, jshirk! It was the same with me when I installed KDE neon yesterday. It seems that the problem is in the proprietary drivers. My solution was to install KDE neon without downloading the proprietary drivers during the system installation process. I hope I was helpfull! (Ps: translated with Google Translate)

Valeu @MisaelViera. Seu conselho deu certo.

misaelvieira wrote:[quote="jHi, jshirk! It was the same with me when I installed KDE neon yesterday. It seems that the problem is in the proprietary drivers. My solution was to install KDE neon without downloading the proprietary drivers during the system installation process. I hope I was helpfull! (Ps: translated with Google Translate)

Same thing happen to me over the weekend (I did select 3rd party software during installation). No problem booting from the live ISO on USB, but black screen with mouse cursor upon booting after installing. Tried various nomodeset, et. al. solutions to no success. Then did pkcon refresh, pkcon update (from Ctrl+Alt+F2 TTY) since my ISO was about two weeks old and I knew there would be updates. After rebooting, the login screen came right up. This was a newly built system Pentium Gold 5400, B310 MB, 16 GB, 240 GB M2, and no GPU card. This is the first system out of five so far that I installed KDE Neon on that had this problem.

I got it fixed. It's a kwin thing. Changed from OpenGL to Xrender as the renderer. Problem solved.

mattdawolf wrote:I got it fixed. It's a kwin thing. Changed from OpenGL to Xrender as the renderer. Problem solved.

I have the same issue as just posted. How do you do this?
Is this issue fixed in the latest release?

I have the same issue on a Dell G7 laptop with openSUSE Tumbleweed.

Switching the rendering backend (from OpenGL 2.x or 3.x) to XRender doesn't solve the problem, it only causes high CPU usage (kwin_x11process uses 100% of 1 CPU core all the time)