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This is a new install on a Sony Vaio E-series VPCEB11FM.

After pressing the power button to boot, if I then hit Esc or Shift to open the GRUB menu, and then selected the first (default) menu option labelled "Ubuntu", the system boots to the desktop perfectly.

However, if I don't open GRUB and just the install boot after powering on, Ubuntu won't boot:...

the purple screen will display for a short-while

then

the 5-dots loading screen will display, but will flash with every change of the dot

and then hang forever on this flashing 5-dot display

unless

I type some magical combo of Ctrl-Alt-F2 , 3, 4, etc...

and then a tty login screen will appear

then, over the tty screen, the mouse cursor will appear after a moment or two, which generally indicates that the GUI login screen is now ready.

Simplified version: Ubuntu doesn't want to boot to the GUI unless it first displays something in "ANSI", either GRUB or a tty screen.

Ugh?

MockWhy
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  • Pass a screenshot of your grub menu. Use the edit button to extend your question. if it doesn't show *Ubuntu selected, it might point to a borked partition – kanehekili May 25 '20 at 22:35

1 Answers1

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As described in the question, something about the splash screen and/or loading screen was bothering the gdm.

So I used this ...

https://askubuntu.com/a/198605/1087176

... and disabled the splash screen, as well as disabled 'quiet' so that the boot process would always display progress via text-mode output.

Boots properly now... or at least properly enough.

MockWhy
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