Because the developers don´t think users are bright enough to make that determination on their own. Also, for whatever reasons, the developers WANT certain services to run on startup.

Linux itself may not be spyware but many apps that run on it are.

Knowledge is power and the more companies kn ow about you, the better for them.

https://itsfoss.com/systemd-free-distros/

14 Systemd-free Linux Distro Options

1. Devuan 2. AntiX 3. MX Linux 4. Nitrux 5. Void Linux 6. Gentoo 7. GoboLinux 8. Alpine Linux 9. Artix 10. TinyCore Linux 11. Chimera Linux 12. Venom Linux 13. Kiss Linux 14. PCLinuxOS

I ran systemd-analyze blame then copied the first 15 or so lines of the response. Explained I was hoping to improve boot times on my Ubuntu 24 laptop in Perplexity AI and asked which services can be disabled and/or masked.

I delete the plymouth service concerning the Budgie Desktop. I installed Budgie some time ago, but I did not use it anymore.

I saves appr. 10 sec in boottime.
Thanks

–purge is actually – – purge, two minus signs one after another (without a space between them). The comment section autocorrects consecutive minuses to a dash or something.

The first service will automatically update your package manager database. And, depending on what utilities you have installed, it may also upgrade certain packages, e.g., automatic security upgrades.

If those services run in the background, then there’s no point in removing them. I mean those may be waiting for something in the background, even after your desktop is already displayed. So they don’t really make your computer boot 28 seconds later. For example, the APT service may simply wait to get an Internet connection.

If however, you do feel they cause a delay for you, read this: https://askubuntu.com/questions/800479/ubuntu-16-04-slow-boot-apt-daily-service

If you mask the apt service then remember to “sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade” manually and periodically.

I say, only mask them if they really do slow down boot. Otherwise, leave them on, they’re useful. Use the timer on your phone and see if there’s a difference between them active and inactive. Difference means more than 20% time difference. If on one boot you get 40 seconds and on another you get 39, it’s not really a difference. You’ll always get small differences, even when booting the exact same services multiple times.

You may be able to shave off some seconds off your boot time if you disable boot loading screens. The plymouth service is usually active on computers where graphical boot animations/images/progress bars are used (although it can have other purposes as well).

Use “apt –purge autoremove [name-of-package]” to get rid of what you don’t need. –purge also removes configuration files associated with the package.

28.300s apt-daily.service
20.913s plymouth-quit-wait.service

these 2 services takes a lot of boottime. Is it safe to mask these 2 services?
They take appr. 60% of my boottime.

waiting for your answer,
regards
Wim dekkers

Well, first there’s googling. If you search for the service and can’t find info about what it does, chances are it’s something important, core to the OS that no one is talking about.

As far as the command line goes, here’s an example for the Debian family:

systemctl cat libvirtd.service

This will list the contents of the service file. Here, I will find this line: ExecStart=/usr/sbin/libvirtd $libvirtd_opts

Now I can search and see which package installed that file:

dpkg -S /usr/sbin/libvirtd

And finally, with the output of that command I can see what the package does:

apt show libvirt-daemon

And I can even simulate the removal of the package to see what other dependent packages would be removed:

apt -s remove libvirt-daemon

There’s no easy way to tell you what you need and what you don’t. It really depends on your use case.

From my Windows days I remember that there are sites that help determine what services/apps can be disabled. I know of no analogous sites for Linux.

“Most Linux-based operating systems have migrated to Systemd.”
It may be possible that because of its penchant to control everything, it is systemd that is causing the slow boots. Besides, while “most Linux-based operating systems have migrated to Systemd”, there are still quite a few that use other init software. Will you write a follow up article on inits other than systemd?.