I am working with a CD-only (no DVD drive) situation, have successfully installed the CLI version and the 'mate' virtual package, and graphical-target exists and is active; but I have not managed to figure out how to get lightdm to start. Help? :)
Try:
systemctl start lightdm
In a case of no DVD drive use Plop manager:
http://sparkylinux.org/wiki/doku.php/boot_old