Hey mate....are you using Mate, XFCE or cinnamon? Variety is the picture manager and I disable it soon as I can.
Trying to boot 31/Makula to recovery ....it's too quick. More later......wanted you to know I was here.
EDIT: They use the escape key, not the tab.

Recovery menu has two things to run....not sure what order. dpkg and fsck. I used fsck to sort something earlier. OK I ran dpkg and am offered packages but get unable to fetch.

I wonder if the wireless is disabled......
Suggest fsck first then dpkg. Google is your friend on these I'm not.
Also there are two menu pages ....one Makulu and one Ubuntu. Both have recovery.
The best of the best to you.
FWIW
The problem is it’s hanging at battery state.You need to hit the space bar during the countdown at startup and it brings up a menu for alternative startups.It’ll run without the splash screen.When it hangs at battery state press ctrl,atl,f3 and it will bring up login. makulu is the password and username.
This was a new install of LXFCE and probably has zip to do with your problem.
