Comment 31 for bug 996791

I have the same issue and tried installing the missing language support.
Now I don't have just the minute-long wait between login screen and desktop startup, I have a minute of a black screen after it, another minute of a black screen with a mouse cursor, then another minute until the desktop appears.

I have also been having minute-long hangs in Firefox and Thunderbird where they would stop redrawing; afterwards, they'd return to normal. I don't know whether this is related, nor do I know how to verify what exactly is causing this bewildering array of malfunctions.

The startx trick doesn't help. Which isn't too surprisinig because I'm experiencing the hangs after X has started.

This means that Xubuntu is currently unacceptable for working with it on a daily basis - here's a critical bug that isn't even being triaged, much less fixed.