EDIT: I kinda solved it by installing Wayland (with Nvidia card, Ouch!) to replace Xorg. Not sure if this is gonna last though. Perhaps Manjaro is the one I'm gonna throw out FIRST if anything happens from now on.
What should be the first line of defense? Timeshift?
This happened after I installed AUR package masterpdfeditor and 2 applications from github (some hashing algorithm programs, I think they were "Dilithium" and "Latice-based-cryptography-main", one of them was provided by NIST.)
If using GUI: I login, black screen for few seconds, then back at login screen.
If going to ctrl+alt+f2, login successful, then startx, see picture provided (higher quality).
I tried adding a new user, but result is the same.
I have a live usb to do the Timeshift. (I can also chroot if necessary... But I'm not extremely professional)
Edit: not worth my time. Blocked them.
Ohoh! Let me try!!
I've always suspected that Manjaro users might be mostly Linux beginners who installed the distro because a YouTube influencer said to do so because they wanted to play Steam.
Seriously, I used Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora, Arch, CrunchBang, and Manjaro as daily runners (just to name a few.) Manjaro was a headache that broke so often, the devs had threads about breakage on the official forums for stable fucking upgrades. If you want to talk about Linux beginners, start by talking about their dev team. Fedora Core 2 was a more stable experience.
Do I have it out for Manjaro? You bet my ass I do. It's a horrible distro that takes a great distro and adds shit you don't need. It freezes Arch updates that you need and should use. Its GPU driver utility is a garbage collection of scripts that don't work half the time.
I got sick of having to troubleshoot breakage and complete fresh installs every time the devs screwed up. It's not stable nor is it bleeding edge.
Want bleeding edge? Use Arch. Manjaro is too many steps behind. Want stability? Use Ubuntu or Fedora. Rock solid experience even if you want to change DEs or DMs. Want to take a gamble on every update? Manjaro and Mint are ready to ruin your day! At least the Mint devs know they are just Ubuntu with codecs and a shitty DE.
Manjaro, I get it. But Mint is excellent if you want a stable Ubuntu experience without Ubuntu Pro ads in the fucking terminal and a slow as shit proprietary package manager, integrated right into your system package manager.
Oh I see, Mint was out to get you too.
Just spitballing here but what if you're incompatible with distros that start with an M?