i updated debian, and gnome display manager broke. all the stack overflows I read told me how to fix it with the command line... but I don't know what my username is, so I can't log in to run the commands. yes, I tried root, debian doesn't have it. i've spent the last month doing everything on the windows partition, because I don't have the time off work to bunker down and fix it. As much as Linux was genuinely and fully better, I can't recommend it to people because I know i'd end up having to do their tech support and i don't even have time for mine
You can recover by using a bootable USB, just like when installing it. And by recover, I mean get access to your disk and figure out what your username was and so on. Of course, this will take time and probably involve a small rabbit hole, and you know your own schedule + time, but if you do have the time and inclination it's possible and I'd be happy to help.
PS If you don't want to deal with cli stuff, I recommend Pop! OS to people. It's basically Ubuntu but without the horrible decisions of the last 10 years. Debian is great, I use it on all my machines, and I can see why people recommend it, but it's definitely not an "avoid the command line" distribution.
i updated debian, and gnome display manager broke. all the stack overflows I read told me how to fix it with the command line... but I don't know what my username is, so I can't log in to run the commands. yes, I tried root, debian doesn't have it. i've spent the last month doing everything on the windows partition, because I don't have the time off work to bunker down and fix it. As much as Linux was genuinely and fully better, I can't recommend it to people because I know i'd end up having to do their tech support and i don't even have time for mine
Oof, that's rough.
You can recover by using a bootable USB, just like when installing it. And by recover, I mean get access to your disk and figure out what your username was and so on. Of course, this will take time and probably involve a small rabbit hole, and you know your own schedule + time, but if you do have the time and inclination it's possible and I'd be happy to help.
PS If you don't want to deal with cli stuff, I recommend Pop! OS to people. It's basically Ubuntu but without the horrible decisions of the last 10 years. Debian is great, I use it on all my machines, and I can see why people recommend it, but it's definitely not an "avoid the command line" distribution.