LightDM Fails to Start After Removing Orca on Kali Linux 2025.1a (VirtualBox)

Kali Linux Forums Kali Linux Troubleshooting
1

Hi everyone, I’m running into a pretty weird issue while trying to remove Orca on Kali 2025.1a (VirtualBox).

After uninstalling Orca, LightDM fails to start on boot, and I’m stuck on a black screen with a blinking underscore (_). Pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1 doesn’t work either—LightDM seems to keep restarting and overlays the black screen with the underscore. Reinstalling or reconfiguring LightDM doesn’t fix it; the error persists after a reboot.

I suspect Orca might have some dependencies that LightDM relies on. For now, I had to reinstall Orca to avoid the issue. Any ideas on what’s going on or how to fix this? Thanks!

2

sudo apt-cache depends orca

Will show you the dependences for orca. I ran it on my system and didn’t see anything obvious that would mess with LightDM.

I’m sorry I’m not sure what else to suggest.

3

Orca doesn’t run, ever, unless you enabled it at set up, or enable it later in your settings, it will have no effect on your system if left ‘off’ but lightDM will always check its settings at boot up, in case its needed, so removing it will always cause problems.