Dell XPS 13 9360 takes ~90 seconds to boot

Question

I got a Dell XPS 13 9360-5142 yesterday specifically to install Ubuntu 18.04 on it. Weird thing is, it takes close to 90 seconds to boot.

It starts, the Dell logo appears, then the screen changes to the Ubuntu black-ish background, then around 20-30 seconds into booting the screen turns off, then it turns back on around 75 seconds in, the Ubuntu logo appears and it goes to the login screen a few seconds later.

I don't quite get why it takes so long, it's running on a decent CPU and SSD so it should only take 30 seconds to boot at most I would think. It also hangs on restart with a blinking cursor in the top left...

Does anyone have any ideas what's going on?

Here's an image of my about screen

systemd-analyze output:

Startup finished in 9.226s (firmware) + 3.834s (loader) + 33.914s (kernel) + 7.915s (userspace) = 54.890s  
graphical.target reached after 7.866s in userspace

systemd-analyze blame output:

      5.846s NetworkManager-wait-online.service
      3.013s plymouth-quit-wait.service
      1.504s bolt.service
      1.328s plymouth-start.service
      1.016s fwupd.service
       974ms systemd-backlight@backlight:intel_backlight.service
       946ms apparmor.service
       858ms plymouth-read-write.service
       568ms dev-mapper-ubuntu\x2d\x2dvg\x2droot.device
       296ms dev-loop11.device
       286ms snapd.service
       284ms dev-loop12.device
       283ms dev-loop15.device
       281ms dev-loop16.device
       280ms dev-loop14.device
       272ms dev-loop13.device
       251ms NetworkManager.service
       196ms systemd-logind.service
       173ms systemd-udev-trigger.service
       171ms systemd-timesyncd.service
       169ms systemd-resolved.service
       149ms networkd-dispatcher.service
       138ms snap-ubuntu\x2dsocial\x2dkit-3.mount
       135ms snap-canonical\x2dlivepatch-41.mount
       131ms snap-gtk\x2dcommon\x2dthemes-319.mount
       129ms snap-gnome\x2dcalculator-180.mount
       128ms snap-gnome\x2dcalculator-154.mount
       127ms snap-gnome\x2dlogs-25.mount
       126ms snap-gnome\x2dlogs-37.mount
       125ms snap-gnome\x2d3\x2d26\x2d1604-70.mount
       122ms snap-gnome\x2dcharacters-103.mount
       121ms snap-gnome\x2dsystem\x2dmonitor-51.mount
       119ms udisks2.service
       119ms snap-libreoffice-71.mount
       115ms networking.service
       114ms ModemManager.service
       108ms accounts-daemon.service
       106ms keyboard-setup.service
       101ms systemd-rfkill.service
        91ms upower.service
        83ms lvm2-pvscan@259:2.service
        76ms systemd-journal-flush.service
        76ms snap-google\x2dplay\x2dmusic\x2ddesktop\x2dplayer-47.mount
        74ms snap-gnome\x2dcharacters-69.mount
        72ms dev-loop5.device
        72ms speech-dispatcher.service
        71ms avahi-daemon.service
        71ms systemd-journald.service
        71ms apport.service
        69ms dev-loop9.device
        68ms rtkit-daemon.service
        67ms snap-gnome\x2d3\x2d26\x2d1604-59.mount
        64ms dev-loop8.device
        63ms dev-loop10.device
        63ms dev-loop7.device
        62ms dev-loop6.device
        58ms grub-common.service
        53ms packagekit.service
        51ms snap-gnome\x2dsystem\x2dmonitor-36.mount
        48ms bluetooth.service
        46ms rsyslog.service
        45ms thermald.service
        44ms wpa_supplicant.service
        43ms user@1000.service
        42ms snap-core-4917.mount
        42ms gpu-manager.service
        41ms lvm2-monitor.service
        41ms user@120.service
        35ms snap-core-4486.mount
        33ms systemd-udevd.service
        28ms colord.service
        26ms systemd-modules-load.service
        25ms systemd-update-utmp-runlevel.service
        21ms systemd-fsck@dev-disk-by\x2duuid-818C\x2dFA47.service
        21ms gdm.service
        18ms dev-loop0.device
        17ms systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service
        16ms ufw.service
        16ms polkit.service
        15ms kerneloops.service
        14ms pppd-dns.service
        14ms snapd.seeded.service
        14ms blk-availability.service
        13ms sys-kernel-debug.mount
        13ms systemd-tmpfiles-setup-dev.service
        12ms dev-hugepages.mount
        12ms dns-clean.service
        12ms dev-loop1.device
        11ms systemd-sysctl.service
        11ms systemd-remount-fs.service
        10ms dev-mqueue.mount
         9ms dev-loop4.device
         9ms boot-efi.mount
         8ms systemd-random-seed.service
         7ms ureadahead-stop.service
         6ms systemd-update-utmp.service
         6ms kmod-static-nodes.service
         6ms console-setup.service
         6ms sys-fs-fuse-connections.mount
         5ms systemd-user-sessions.service
         5ms dev-loop3.device
         4ms sys-kernel-config.mount
         4ms dev-mapper-ubuntu\x2d\x2dvg\x2dswap_1.swap
         3ms systemd-backlight@leds:dell::kbd_backlight.service
         3ms setvtrgb.service
         2ms snapd.socket

Answer 1

Just tried dual booting with my Dell XPS 15 9560. Windows 10 boots in seconds, but Ubuntu could take up to a minute to get to the login screen, and then an additional 30 second to load my user desktop. Unbearable! So I looked into this, and now my boot time is under 10 seconds. Much better :)

So, what did I do? Well, I already had a clean install of Ubuntu (I run 19.10 but should probably work just as fine on 18.04). But first, I updated the firmware, easily done with the Ubuntu Software application, but I also heard this command should do the trick. I don't think this is what actually resolved the issue, but it's recommended to do, nonetheless.

sudo fwupdwgr update
sudo reboot

So what I believe really did it, was installing Nvidia's proprietary drivers. Because I also had an issue where the desktop would freeze very rarely, but for several seconds. So this thread helped me with that, and suddenly the boot time was down. So to install that, just run,

sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall
sudo reboot

And all of the sudden, everything is smooth as butter, and boots fast, logins fast. Everything so fast and snappy! Good luck!