Wanted to post this solution to very slow boot and app loading (basically slow access to SSD) on Asus hardware. This is due to Intel VMD being enabled on the bios. On my Asus zenbook 14 (2025) laptop is was buried at the end of the advanced bios options. Disable this and everything runs great. Note that Windows might not boot after this, but if you force Windows to boot to safe mode it should find more conventional drivers and then boot normally next time.
Edit: this issue was exactly the same on several distros such as Ubuntu 2024.x 2025.x, and most recent Manjaro, and Fedora as of this writing.
Edit: this issue was exactly the same on several distros such as Ubuntu 2024.x 2025.x, and most recent Manjaro, and Fedora as of this writing.
