[akho]

> Linux definitely can be fast, but in my experience it starts slowing down as you install more services and tools

There's a weird tendency to put things into multi-user.target to have them run at boot, even if they are not actually required for user login. There's no actual need to start openssh before gdm, but that's how distros set things up.

[jeroenhd]

That's true, but I don't think GDM actually cares about OpenSSH.

On my machine (which I didn't alter from Ubuntu defaults) GDM runs after:

    system.slice switcheroo-control.service dbus.socket plymouth-quit.service console-setup.service cloud-config.service gpu-manager.service rc-local.service systemd-journald.socket systemd-user-sessions.service basic.target plymouth-start.service [e-mail] fwupd.service sysinit.target

according to systemctl show gdm.service --property=After

cloud-config is the weirdest one, but it has to do with locales and system configurations for automatically deployed systems (and after first install), I believe. [e-mail] is also strange, but doesn't even show up in systemd-analyze blame.

In my boot-analyze charts I don't really see that many problems with illogical start orders to be honest. systemd-networkd-wait-online seems to hold up a bunch of networking services but that depends on the rest of my network responding in time so I can't even blame it for that.