I recently came across a YouTube video created by Blogeee.net which shows both the Windows Eee PC and the Linux Eee PC (I assume each with the same specifications) starting up, launching Firefox, and shutting down. It is very apparent in the video that the Linux version is much faster, but, since only the startup is done at the same time for both machines, it is hard to tell just how much faster. I timed each part (starting up, launching Firefox, and shutting down) to see what the time difference really was. Here is what I found:

Startup
Linux: 30 seconds – Windows: 54 seconds
Launching Firefox
Linux: 4 seconds – Windows: 16 seconds
Shutdown
Linux: 6 seconds – Windows: 68 seconds

(Note: Numbers are approximate. Firefox start time is from clicking on the Firefox icon to the dialog about starting a new session and then from the end of that dialog to when the windows appears, or, in other words, everything but loading the web page and waiting for the user to click on new session or resume session.)

Those numbers by themselves are impressive, but they get even more impressive when you look at how many times faster the Linux version really is.

Startup: Windows takes 24 seconds longer. Linux is just less than twice as fast.
Launching Firefox: Windows takes 12 seconds longer. Linux is four times faster.
Shutdown: Windows takes 62 seconds longer. Linux is slightly more than 11 times faster.

Look at it, Microsoft. Vista would barely even run on these things and Windows XP is much slower than Linux. This is very likely to be Linux’s first major success on the desktop.