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?