On other distro's of Linux I've been able to press ALT+F2, or CTRL+ALT+F2, and enter into non-GUI instances of Terminal. (Theses are termed login terminals?)
I've been trying to do this with Kali Linux, with no luck.
I'm running Kali on a MAC, dual boot with OS X.
Everything else seems to be functioning fine.
Thanks very much,
BirdFriend