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I have numerous hard drives that I boot from. I have drives for Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10 as well as various versions of Ubuntu. Also other distros of Linux such as Kubuntu and Debian.

I have downloaded and installed Ubuntu 18.04.01 and found it painfully slow. I have tested numerous configurations to get the following numbers.

All tests have been run on the very same computer, except for swapping the drive. I have been using three identical SSDs, all purchased at the same time. I began by wiping two SSDs using Darik's Boot and Nuke (writing zeroes). Then I installed a copy of 16.04 on one and 18.04.1 on the other. The third SSD began with a fresh install of Windows 7 and then added 16.04 to it.

I also ran additional tests booting live copies of 16.04 and 18.04.1 from thumb drives (USB 2).

WiFi turned off, Ethernet cable connected.

Here are my times to boot and shutdown.

Boot times are measured from when I pushed the power button.

Windows 7: 20 seconds to boot the the desktop.

Ubuntu 16.04 from SSD: 23 seconds to boot. 3 seconds to shut down.

Ubuntu 16.04 live from thumb drive: 55 + 23 seconds. (The first time is from power on to the screen prompting if I want to try or install Ubuntu. The second is from clicking "Try Ubuntu" to the desktop.) 5 seconds to shutdown.

Ubuntu 18.04.1 from SSD: 4 minutes 40 seconds to boot. 1 minute 5 seconds to shut down.

Ubuntu 18.04.1 live from thumb drive: 6 minutes 12 seconds + 2 minutes 25 seconds. 35 seconds to shutdown.

As you can see, the performance of 18.04 is unacceptable. I did a presentation last night to some Windows users of setting up their systems to dual boot so they could try Ubuntu, but I found that I had to demonstrate the older version. None of them would have cared to ever try anything with the performance of this new version.

Here's the output from "systemd-analyze blame"

     31.709s plymouth-start.service
     30.298s systemd-backlight@backlight:intel_backlight.service
     20.361s plymouth-quit-wait.service
     20.081s apt-daily.service
      3.045s NetworkManager-wait-online.service
      2.923s snapd.service
      2.419s apparmor.service
      1.610s dev-sda1.device
       862ms fwupd.service
       721ms dev-loop3.device
       720ms dev-loop1.device
       718ms dev-loop2.device
       714ms dev-loop0.device
       704ms dev-loop4.device
       698ms dev-loop5.device
       694ms dev-loop6.device
       565ms udisks2.service
       553ms NetworkManager.service
       482ms networkd-dispatcher.service
       478ms swapfile.swap
       404ms keyboard-setup.service
       382ms systemd-journal-flush.service
       358ms ModemManager.service
       351ms systemd-journald.service
       349ms systemd-udev-trigger.service
       241ms dns-clean.service
       238ms accounts-daemon.service
       231ms plymouth-read-write.service
       229ms console-setup.service
       199ms gpu-manager.service
       193ms avahi-daemon.service
       190ms speech-dispatcher.service
       186ms upower.service
       181ms grub-common.service
       176ms systemd-rfkill.service
       166ms systemd-resolved.service
       160ms snap-gnome\x2dcalculator-180.mount
       157ms apport.service
       155ms systemd-logind.service
       155ms snap-gnome\x2dcharacters-103.mount
       151ms systemd-timesyncd.service
       150ms snap-gnome\x2dsystem\x2dmonitor-51.mount
       146ms snap-gnome\x2dlogs-37.mount
       138ms thermald.service
       135ms pppd-dns.service
       132ms dev-loop7.device
       132ms snap-gnome\x2d3\x2d26\x2d1604-70.mount
       131ms rsyslog.service
       126ms snap-gtk\x2dcommon\x2dthemes-319.mount
       113ms snap-core-4917.mount
       108ms bolt.service
       103ms wpa_supplicant.service
       102ms snapd.seeded.service
       101ms alsa-restore.service
        80ms systemd-modules-load.service
        78ms user@1000.service
        75ms systemd-udevd.service
        71ms polkit.service
        66ms packagekit.service
        63ms gdm.service
        60ms systemd-random-seed.service
        58ms dev-mqueue.mount
        57ms sys-kernel-debug.mount
        54ms dev-hugepages.mount
        54ms kmod-static-nodes.service
        53ms ufw.service
        48ms systemd-remount-fs.service
        47ms snap-core-5145.mount
        46ms systemd-sysctl.service
        45ms systemd-tmpfiles-clean.service
        44ms systemd-tmpfiles-setup-dev.service
        37ms networking.service
        35ms sys-kernel-config.mount
        31ms systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service
        29ms colord.service
        29ms kerneloops.service
        28ms sys-fs-fuse-connections.mount
        19ms systemd-user-sessions.service
        17ms systemd-update-utmp.service
        14ms ureadahead-stop.service
        14ms setvtrgb.service
        10ms systemd-update-utmp-runlevel.service
         8ms rtkit-daemon.service
         6ms systemd-backlight@leds:dell::kbd_backlight.service
         4ms snapd.socket
hiigaran
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1 Answers1

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If eye candy like plymouth is not that important for you, which consumes ~31 seconds of your boot time, you can disable it.

First, in the file /etc/default/grub, change the line GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”quiet splash” to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="".

Then, update grub

sudo update-grub

If that's not enough, then do

sudo mv /etc/init/plymouth.conf /etc/init/plymouth.conf.disabled

As for NetworkManager-wait-online.service, edit the file /lib/systemd/system/NetworkManager-wait-online.service as root user, then look for the following lines:

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/bin/nm-online -s -q --timeout=30

Change the timeout to lower value, though some might suggest down until 10 will do, in my system, I have down to 1, and it's running fine.

In my system, I also removed snapd, and my boot time is now only around 18-19 seconds.

References:

Ubuntu 15.04 network manager causing slow boot

How do deactivate plymouth boot screen?

afagarap
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