Dear all,
I am not experienced in Linux and i am desperate.

I have 2 HP Laptops with Intel Core i5 Processors, Intel HD Graphics, no extra Graphic Cards, 6 GiB RAMs, and 320 GB HDDs (not SSDs) each. Number one is for every day use and number two is my spare laptop if number one ever breaks.

I started in April 2020 with installing Solus 4.1 Budgie on both of them. Soleily Budie and no other operating systems, because i wanted to have Laptops with a stable system without technical trouble.

The booting times were about 45 Seconds on each, which i assumed to be alright regarding having HDDs and not SSDs.
I always made the updates using the Software Center, not the Terminal.

With the updates between December 2020 and the upgrade to Solus 4.2 the booting times increased to 1 Minute.

But since 2-3 weeks the booting time of Laptop number one increased to 2 Minutes 30 Seconds, while number two still boots in 1 Minute. I checked both with "sudo eopkg check" and all was ok.

After searching forums and stuff i simply decided to wipe the HDD of number one with DBAN and freshly install Solus 4.2 (including installing all the updates, AUDACITY, PAVUCONTROL and VIVALDI from the software center).

After that the booting time was 1 Minute again, and it felt like ok again.

Last Night i launched Audacity, pavucontrol and Vivaldi to initialize the preferences.

But today, after switching on my Laptop, the booting time is up to 2 Minutes 30 Seconds again!!!
For around 30 Seconds it shows "Loading Inital Ramdisk" and then it takes another 1 Minute 20 Seconds to reach the login screen.

I have no idea why booting the system became so slow?
Could it be that launching Audacity or pavucontrol broke something in the system?
And why is this only happening to Laptop number one and not to number two?

And another thing i dont understand:
The Solus-installation-USB-Stick only needs 25 Seconds to boot my Laptops.
Why is booting from a very slow external USB 2.0 device so much faster than booting from my internal HDDs (they are set to AHCI)?
For me this doesnt make sense at all and I would be grateful for any Help.

    BTO he booting time is up to 2 Minutes 30 Seconds again

    I hope someone here can help you more than I can, but I can confirm that your original boot times seem very normal, given your equipment stats.

    Any chance you could back up your personal folder and reinstall Solus fresh? If that's an option, I can refer you to a previous post of mine that suggests how to back up your /home folder and including a list of the applications that are currently installed. You could use that list with eopkg to reinstall them again on the new Solus installation.

    I located that message, in case you're interested, but I'm at a loss to create a link to it. But it's really easy to find. Just search the forum for the word "restic" and I believe my post is the first one that will appear. It's a tutorial called "A Basic Backup Strategy."

    I'm going to do some more yard work right now, but I'll be back in soon and I'll check to see how you're doing.

      BTO But since 2-3 weeks the booting time of Laptop number one increased to 2 Minutes 30 Seconds, while number two still boots in 1 Minute. I checked both with "sudo eopkg check" and all was ok.

      After searching forums and stuff i simply decided to wipe the HDD of number one with DBAN and freshly install Solus 4.2 (including installing all the updates, AUDACITY, PAVUCONTROL and VIVALDI from the software center).

      After that the booting time was 1 Minute again, and it felt like ok again.

      Last Night i launched Audacity, pavucontrol and Vivaldi to initialize the preferences.

      But today, after switching on my Laptop, the booting time is up to 2 Minutes 30 Seconds again!!!

      this is just an insane sequence and it's lack of sense makes all the sense in the world only in the 'sense' that these things happen...
      ...post-updates boots on 2 computers went from 45 to 60. means nothing to me as a passerby.
      ...then fresh install plus add three programs....still one minute boot--on only one laptop now? why did we mention both since different situations?
      ...then one day you adjust preference settings on these three programs on one laptop and boom! we add 90 seconds (on the one computer) to the one minute boot

      ideas: your first two replies were right. Additional food for thought from experience:
      *the one computer thing helps any hypothesis that the main HDD is on the way out. why would a usb dance cartwheels around a sketchy hdd? because it can. OR it's a live iso usb installer, not technically an operating system
      *if it's not a flailing HDD (happened before to me, boot times long), then the ONLY thing you have to explain the addition of 90 seconds to the existing what-I-believe-to-be-normal 1 minute, is the sound settings. Throw vivaldi out of the mix imho. can playing with the config settings of two like (audio) programs effect an OS's boot time? Probably. I've fubard stuff my messing with apps the wrong way.
      *never heard of DBAN as a wiper/reformatter? Can we rule it out?
      *I ran with 4GB mem quite a while on a desktop and that had limitations. So 6 on a laptop the same? I know that does not explain the 90 seconds.

      BTO I always made the updates using the Software Center, not the Terminal.

      Also, the opposite is recommended (by users) but very likely unrelated to any of this.
      I love mysteries but I aint too good solving them.

          Good Morning, First of all: Thank you Mr "WetGeek", "algent" and "brent" for your replies, i very much apprechiate your help :-)

          I followed the link from "algent" and checked: The Swap Partition UUID did match.

          Nevertheless I ran what "Data Drake" suggested:
          sudo clr-boot-manager update

          This reduced the Booting time to 2 Minutes, so its 30 Seconds less now.

          But now the choice between booting into Current or Previous Kernel is gone. Is this bad?

          I only copy-typed what was suggested and i have no idea what i am doing...

            BTO But now the choice between booting into Current or Previous Kernel is gone. Is this bad?

            No it shouldn't be. The old kernel just got deleted and this is normal. Usually you need the old kernel when you have problems with current kernel. Solus updates the kernel very often so don't worry about it.

              What's the output of systemd-analyze blame? That should show you what exactly is taking that long.

                How can I copy+paste the output from terminal into here?

                  BTO
                  1)copy your output
                  2)in the solus reply box here click the code button
                  3)paste you output. it will automatically be formatted correctly

                  Exception to this advice:
                  if the output is gigantic they prefer a pastebin link or similar.

                    Ok, once again: thank you BRENT for your detailed help and your hint to the sequence of events!!!

                    I removed AUDACITY with:
                    sudo eopkg remove --purge audacity

                    On terminal it needed quite a few seconds (10-20) when it automatically worked on:
                    updating clr-boot-manager
                    updating mimetype database

                    So i can only guess that AUDACITY is changing these 2 fundamentally, when its being installed.
                    Finally automatically updating the "icon theme cache", "desktop database" and "manpages database" did not take that long.

                    Then i did another:
                    sudo update-grub

                    Finally another:
                    sudo eopkg check

                    Drove down the system. Booted again 2-3 times. Booting time back to 1 MINUTE !!!

                    So from my experience, installing and starting AUDACITY changed my "usual" 1 Minute-booting-time to 2.30 Minutes.

                    I hope this helps if someone meets the same problems.

                      BTO So from my experience, installing and starting AUDACITY changed my "usual" 1 Minute-booting-time to 2.30 Minutes.

                      Process of elimination, well done. Congrats. I wonder if Staudey 's command (systemd-analyze blame) would have confirmed it? No matter, I suppose.

                          Just in case if someone knows further tricks to reduce my booting times, without doing more damage than good, here is the actual upper part of systemd-analyze blame:
                          12.428s systemd-journal-flush.service
                          4.181s initrd-switch-root.service
                          3.843s udisks2.service
                          3.704s systemd-udevd.service
                          2.884s systemd-tmpfiles-setup-dev.service
                          2.520s ModemManager.service
                          2.474s org.cups.cupsd.service
                          2.354s lvm2-pvscan@8:2.service
                          2.184s polkit.service
                          2.051s ufw.service
                          1.922s apparmor.service
                          1.623s avahi-daemon.service
                          1.618s NetworkManager.service
                          1.331s wpa_supplicant.service
                          1.310s systemd-logind.service
                          1.162s systemd-fsck@dev-disk-by\x2duuid-030b7a8a\x2d5be7\x2d4cb5\x2da70b\x2df551541c2e8e.service
                          1.080s systemd-backlight@backlight:acpi_video0.service
                          1.065s accounts-daemon.service
                          946ms systemd-backlight@backlight:intel_backlight.service
                          881ms lightdm.service
                          861ms systemd-sysctl.service
                          833ms modprobe@configfs.service
                          832ms modprobe@fuse.service
                          703ms auditd.service
                          663ms systemd-random-seed.service
                          537ms systemd-udev-trigger.service
                          523ms modprobe@drm.service
                          522ms colord.service
                          506ms systemd-tmpfiles-setup.service
                          474ms clr-boot-manager-booted.service
                          459ms dev-hugepages.mount
                          459ms dev-mqueue.mount
                          459ms dev-disk-by\x2duuid-0af2cf5b\x2ddb7e\x2d4cfe\x2db3e7\x2d8a9f25c32609.swap
                          458ms sys-kernel-debug.mount
                          457ms sys-kernel-tracing.mount
                          371ms kmod-static-nodes.service
                          298ms upower.service
                          273ms systemd-remount-fs.service
                          187ms systemd-fsck-root.service
                          165ms systemd-rfkill.service
                          160ms initrd-parse-etc.service
                          142ms user@1001.service
                          132ms systemd-journald.service
                          105ms systemd-user-sessions.service

                            BTO 12.428s systemd-journal-flush.service

                            That seems extremely long. What's the output of journalctl --disk-usage

                              There is only one output-line:
                              Archived and active journals take up 88.0M in the file system.

                              Also not out of the ordinary. In fact much smaller than mine.
                              Not sure what's wrong with it. Maybe one last thing to check is sudo journalctl --verify

                              Edit: also maybe check sudo journalctl --disk-usage to see if there are logs not pertaining to your user that take up more space.

                              Ah ok, i think now i got it right.
                              The output of journalctl --disk-usage
                              Archived and active journals take up 16.0M in the file system.

                              The output of sudo journalctl --disk-usage
                              Archived and active journals take up 88.0M in the file system.

                              And of sudo journalctl --verify

                              PASS: /run/log/journal/b4469d08f0944d2c94070f38cc3bdcd1/system.journal                                                                               
PASS: /var/log/journal/bec537acd2834eeb993f22de02d6cae6/user-1001.journal                                                                            
PASS: /var/log/journal/bec537acd2834eeb993f22de02d6cae6/system.journal                                                                               
PASS: /var/log/journal/bec537acd2834eeb993f22de02d6cae6/user-1002.journal                                                                            
PASS: /var/log/journal/bec537acd2834eeb993f22de02d6cae6/user-1000.journal

                              Okay, seems like nothing is wrong with the journals themselves. Weird that the flush service takes 12 seconds though. Not sure where to go from here.

                                Staudey My journal service was 14 seconds until I vacuumed it all up:
                                8.748s dev-loop4.device
                                7.790s dev-loop2.device
                                7.153s dev-loop5.device
                                6.698s systemd-journal-flush.service
                                6.555s dev-loop1.device
                                6.520s dev-loop6.device
                                5.477s dev-loop3.device
                                5.430s dev-loop0.device
                                that's my top eight. seems the loop devices slow me down but I am at a minute boot or less, so no complaints.

                                  Alright, if brent is ok with one minute boot, then i am ok with it as well :-)

                                  One more question: i went through the Bios settings today in order to find possibilities of improvement.
                                  Intel HT-Technology (hyper threading): On
                                  Virtualization: On
                                  SATA-Mode: AHCI
                                  RAID: No
                                  UEFI Boot: Off
                                  Fast-Boot: Off
                                  Secure-Boot: Off
                                  Intel Anti-Theft Technology: Off
                                  Drive Lock: Off
                                  System Management Command: Off

                                  What is the best setting for the Intel DEP Data Execution Prevention? Should it be switched On or Off ??
                                  And can i switch it even after my installation is completed, or would this affect the system?

                                    BTO lived with more than a minute (around 90) for a long time with an old rig. now with a new rig I'm probably closer to 40-45s. But the old rig taught me a lesson about patience: even though I don't have to anymore, I still press the power button, and find other stuff to do like make coffee or take out recyclables or brush teeth instead of play the game and watch it boot and roll my eyes🙂

                                    I don't know bios answers but this commnad shaved 6 seconds off my journal service boot time sudo journalctl --vacuum-size=100M as I mentioned above, today.
                                    There's a thread called "housekeeping" that is excellent for freeing clutter...but I can't vouch it all helps boot faster.
                                    I do agree with your approach, if you had 45 before then you should be able to have it again. How much stuff do you autostart? How come Audacity caused this and Pavu didn't contribute?