Speaking of changing the mining software, has anyone seen this happen? Update to the latest cgminer 3.0.0 and when you go to compile it want you to install libusb-1.0, (For supporting BFL FPGAs) so you do an apt-get install libusb-1.0 and it does it, then you can compile, everything is fine and cgminer runs. But then when you reboot, it comes up to a Debian login screen?? Strangest thing. I was going to mess around with it again later this evening to see if I can reproduce the steps on a different USB stick.
I've seen that happen when X takes its sweet time starting up.