http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=7324
Just tell me if this is an old discussion because I somewhat agree with the article.
Well, I do and I don't! I do think it's an issue of what distro you run and, perhaps more importantly, which desktop. Also, whilst there's no doubt that XP boots much faster than any Linux distro, I don't agree that the desktop itself is fast. I didn't find Mandrake slow and Fedora Core 2 just whizzes along; SuSE 9.1 is incredibly slow, with its "default" settings, if you run KDE. I run Gnome and have no speed issues. I'm not sure what I'll do when 2.6 becomes the standard because I really don't like it and am not happy with the direction Gnome is taking (this is how it will be - take it or leave it). Maybe Novell/SuSE/Ximian will pull something wonderful out of the hat! I'm sure the average Windows user would find their way around Gnome quite easily, though. So, given that there's no speed issue, I prefer Linux because it's generally more customisable, more secure, and offers me more choice. Oh - and I nearly forgot - it isn't fettered by these pesky licensing issues. If I don't like something - I can change it. The fact that I'm not capable of that doesn't matter - I have the choice. If we want to attract more "ordinary" users to Linux, then they will expect wizards, graphical tools, automatic hardware detection and configuration - the lot - because that's what Windows gives them. And, to be honest and truthful, it doesn't do that bad a job, especially if you're not that concerned about the inner workings of your system. If all these things are added to Linux distros, then, of course they will become more bloated and slower: I don't know any way around that. As I said above, it's about choice: if you're a power user, comfortable with the CLI, and want speed above all - use slack or gentoo, with fluxbox or xfce (if you really must have X). If you just want to surf the web and check your email, but with some security - use Mandrake or SuSE with KDE, but accept that it'll be a bit slow. It ain't a perfect world.