[DESKTOP] Update threw an error and a black screen is the result!

[GreyGeek]

I'm running Kubuntu 16.04 and it is doing great.
This morning when I booted up I got a notice of an upgrade. I fired up Muon and selected the five files, a kernel upgrade to -24.
(I usually use apt from the command line but at 75 I am not consistant! )
I started the upgrade. It ended rather quickly and abnormally and threw an error with no details available. Grub update was not run.
I rebooted and after logging in I was presented with black screen and a mouse pointer which moved but otherwise was unresponsive to button clicks.
The KDE desktop environment was running, even though the desktop was not displaying, so I did an Alt-F2 to get the Krunner command line. I entered "dolphin" and it appeared.
I used Dolphin to rename ~/.kde to ~/.kde_old. I closed Dolphin.
In the Konsole I used

sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock (because Muon crashed without releasing the lock)
sudo apt update
sudo apt dist-upgrade

Apt ran the grub update.

I called up Konsole from Krunner and issued "reboot".

After the bootup and login Plasma5 came up in all its glory and my desktop was exactly as i left it yesterday.

[Snowhog]

That'll learn ya for use'n a GUI application to do package management!

[GreyGeek]

Yup, my bad!
(Really, it was just a sudden impulse! I didn't mean to do it.... Honest!)

[stratacast]

What no synaptic? ;P
-- apt-get ftw

[GreyGeek]

What no synaptic? ;P
-- apt-get ftw

I've always used Synaptic, and had it installed on my Xenial for a while, but when I checked out Muon I noticed it had everything that Synaptic had and didn't requirre QTK+, so I switched.
However, even Muon is several times slower than apt or apt-get in a Konsole, and I usually stick with the Konsole.