@Krisu not a good first response to get help here.
How about:
Because I asked you to.
It may not be the same issue - cause may be different. Lots has changed in 2 years.
The forum wouldn't work if everyone used one topic per type of issue.
I installed Xfce. Scaled fonts, icons and cursor. Looks a bit odd, but it works. Emulationstation, kodi and the desktop are all accesible from the couch :)
@herb_fargus I'll give the workarounds a try tomorrow but I don't think it's the same issue. I don't get any errors or crashes or anything - i can even switch to another console. It's literally that startx just leads to a blank black screen.
It appears the TI-99 logo in this theme (regular and metadata versions) is still showing as the TRS-80 logo. The TFT version of the theme does have the proper TI-99 logo. I'm not sure if this theme is still updated but just thought I'd mention as it’s a fantastic theme.