Nice, that is progress

Can you open a terminal inside this kiosk mode you mentioned?

If so, before trying anything else, plug a usb drive and back up everything you think you might need later

After that, you can do the following:

 ```sudo systemctl stop lightdm``` (or ```gdm``` if it can't find the lightdm service)

this will stop the current X session and drop you back to a TTY

login on this terminal

rename files like ```.Xprofile``` and ```.xsession``` or something like that to something else (I like to append ```.old```)

try to start a new session with:

```startx``` (try to append ```--verbose``` to see if it throws any useful log

if ```startx``` didn't work, try
```sudo systemctl start lightdm```

Let's see what happens after all that