Performance shock

[CB]

I've been using Linux exclusively now for about 18 months -- first
Fedora, and then Ubuntu (Warty, now upgraded to Hoary).

The other day I was experimenting with some stuff and on a new disk
put fresh installs of Hoary and Windows Server 2003, and added a few
favoured apps (firefox, thunderbird, etc). Playing with the two was a
shock --  Windows is just so fast to use by comparison. Firefox starts
up almost instantly and doesn't hog the cpu once a few tabs are open,
windows explorer (atrociously designed though it is) lets me get
instant access to any part of the filesystem, unlike nautilus which
kind of oozes around. It occurs to me that due to my pleasure re so
many aspects of using linux (esp Gnome, which I love) in general, and
Ubuntu in particular, I had just got used to how slow it is.

Don't hate/attack me for saying this. I'm certainly not going back to
Windows (there's too much I can't do on it without impossibly
expensive software), and I'm not criticising Ubuntu (whose developers
have done a great job). I don't really care either if you 'disagree'
with my comparison (it wouldn't mean anything to me, because on my
system, the speed difference is unarguable). But I'd love to know if
there's either any general/fundamental reason why linux is just never
going to be as fast Windows as a desktop, or if there are any things I
might do to speed it up.

Two caveats -- it's not an issue of unnecessary services (I'm
comparing fresh installs here), and I don't want to use a ligher
environment (Gnome's clean design and facilities have become integral
to the way I work).