response 95 of 203:

Feb 2 01:59 UTC 2007

Linux applications typically start up slower than their Windows counterparts
(it's a function of the split between "fork" and "exec") but they typically
stay up longer. There was some discussion a while back about investigating
how to make start up times quicker, but it doesn't seem to have come to
anything.

Regardless, without being able to compare with W2K, when Windows starts up
it takes a LONG time before the computer is usable after the desktop comes
up. In Linux the desktop takes longer to come up, but is actually usable when
it does and is therefore probably faster than Windows. The only case when this
might not be true is when you have a LOT of programs set to start up on login,
but as far as I can tell, even in that pathological case it's still possible
to interact with the desktop (starting up other applications, etc.)