For those random people having random issues with logins lately..it may not be your Linux distro. Apparently a nasty bug has creeped into ext4, which is causing all kinds of mayhem. Make sure when installing a new distro, you mount your /home directory as something besides ext4 in order to keep your data safe. See this link , scroll down to the Section entitled Tips and Tricks (by Robert Storey) to see more of what's going on, in case you are affected. Not a lot of people are at this point, supposedly just randomly. The chief maintainer of ext4 is working on a solution now.