I often get an unbootable Linux system and not remember which file I edited or whatever else I did. In this situation, I hit Alt-F2 to switch to the second console (the first one is used to output boot information). Then here’s what I do at the terminal

Unfortunately, that’s not what happened this time. Xorg had problems starting, and I couldn’t issue keyboard commands. Next, I booted into Windows to finish up my tasks. See, I made a shared NTFS partition that is mounted by every OS I boot. In Linux, I create a symlink in the home folder called Documents, somewhat like 7’s Documents library folder. Now on the weekend, I finally get a chance to see what’s up with the Debian system. A piece of wisdom (wit won’t really help) applies here,

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
– Albert Einstein

I simply used the reparation kernel boot parameters and switched to a terminal using Alt+F2. Now I’m in the driver’s seat again.

I immediately ran that command, as I remembered a message about it last time I used apt-get. Apparently, Entrance, e17’s login manager, couldn’t start without some configuration files removed by apt-get purge. The autoremove command does dependency checking for programs that are not used in the tree anymore. It also uninstalls them, so they are no longer loaded via symlink by the login manager.

That was it. Problems in Linux are often as quick and easy to fix as it was created.