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I posted this: Extremely slow boot, with kernel error

But I've now added video=SVIDEO-1:d to the kernel boot parameters in /etc/default/grub and my boot time reduced from 4 minutes 27 seconds to 57 seconds.

I will leave the steps I here for people new to GNU/Linux as I am.

editor's note: please see comments for minor critique of this method - use of sudo gedit is not recommended

sudo su

(Enter your password)

sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

Now just add the video=SVIDEO-1:d to this line 

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

It should look like this:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash video=SVIDEO-1:d"

Save the file and exit.

Again in the terminal, run this command to make the change effective:

sudo update-grub
sudo reboot

Now I have 57-second boot. Could it be faster?

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  • 3
    You should always use sudo -H gedit instead of sudo gedit which can steal your regular user gedit preferences away from you. Some people here recommend NEVER using sudo with gedit.
    – WinEunuuchs2Unix
    Jul 4, 2018 at 17:39
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    Depends on your hardware, your HDD or ssd specifically. Also on your installation. My 16.04 system boots up in about 50 seconds, but I also have a password promt for ssd decryption in these 50 seconds. I guess an unencrypted Ubuntu should boot up in under 40 seconds on a modest system. I got an 2011 Dell Latitude E5410 with core i520 and Crucial SSD, for reference.
    – mondjunge
    Jul 4, 2018 at 17:43
  • You could add some hardware & setup details to this to make it more answerable - you included some in your other post, but you should make this question complete without depending on a link for essential information. In particular, you could include the output of systemd-analyze blame to see what's taking the longest at boot.
    – Zanna ♦
    Jul 5, 2018 at 6:41
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    sudo gedit after a sudo su? There is something missing, or something totally useless
    – damadam
    Jul 5, 2018 at 6:52

1 Answer 1

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You probably got the normal boot time for a normal HDD with those 57 seconds. It was close to what I had as a boottime when I still use a hdd. systemd has a tool to examine your boot process: 

systemd-analyze plot > /home/$USER/Pictures/plot.svg

This will create a picture of your boot and the time spent on each item. Maybe there is something you can disable to speed it up a bit more.

Best advice I can give though is to get an ssd. Use that as boot drive. Reinstall Ubuntu on that and mount the old hdd as a partition. Remove Ubuntu from that except for your personal data (roughly that would be anything not in /home/)

You will see the biggest improvement in boot speed for that and installation is going to quick too. Booting from a ssd takes me under 8 seconds. Installation of a new version of Ubuntu takes about 16 minutes.

sudo gedit /etc/default/grub

Please do not use sudo with graphical programs, like gedit. It might have unwanted side effects: the owner and group can change. grub is owned by root but it is better to use a command line editing tool for command line editing. Like sudo nano /etc/default/grub or sudo vi /etc/default/grub.

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    the owner of gedit's config file in ~ is what could change, not the owner of the file being edited. The problem is easily avoided using the -H flag, so that config changes are written to root's home directory
    – Zanna ♦
    Jul 5, 2018 at 6:38

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