This is because of several things.

Windows loading time is faster because windows use "registry". "Registry" is quite unfamous because it gives a lot of trouble and makes things quite unflexible but it can really speed up the loading time.
Windows GUI is integrated unlike Linux. So it's GUI response is faster. But ofcourse it cannot get the flexibility like Linux GUI.

If you're using nVidia cards install their official drivers.

The Free ones are much slower unfortunately, this leads a lot of people to think that Linux is not responsive. Luckily upgrading is easy.

I've noticed that Linux Load Time itself depends quite a bit on the filesystem you are running, also of course how many processes you have auto starting. I went from ext2=extremely slow, to ext3=still no speed daemon, to Reiser=doing ok but kinda buggy still yet, and Finally to: JFS which is damn quick... my linux load time to actual gui bootup is very very close to XP boot time. Yes i have xp and win2k too...heheh but im converting to linux.
as for gui response...yes unless you are some super godly G-U-R-U it is. Sad thing is they can *almost* match MS gui for speed if tweaked properly... but then who has the time and patience to comb though literally every setting in the whole dang OS.... bleh. Still and all, its very usable now days and im really liking slackware for its package management. This dependancy hell at time gets a little bit anoying, but google for that is my BEST friend
As for processing, yes but part of that is due to the fact that linux uses ram MUCH better than any version of windows ever did, and better than even my very heavily tweaked windows... ram is MUCH faster than hitting swap...

Cheers

Sorry I kind of a newbie too. What does xinetd do? I want to shut this service down too.

xinetd is a powerful replacement for inetd. xinetd has access control machanisms, extensive logging capabilities, the ability to make services available based on time, and can place limits on the number of servers that can be started, among other things.

HEHE, took that right outta the services app

Or you can use a REAL filesystem and switch to XFS


My favorite filesystem is deffinitely XFS, and I noticed quite an improvement when I switched over to it. It also only takes about .3 seconds to format a whole drive as XFS, as opposed to 20 seconds or so for ext3 (But, now that I think about it, I don't think Red Hat really supports XFS anyways, so ignore me).

Actually...
SGI supports only Redhat "officially" with XFS.... Head over to SGI and dig around a bit. www.sgi.com/developers/oss/ Its pretty interesting stuff. Yup I agree that XFS is sweet. Takes a bit of doing for a newb to get going at first though, the default kernel with slack 9 is slightly borked... im sure you compiled your own kernel with slack 9 and JFS its just a few simple mouse clicks and go go gadget....errr heh. Im running XFS on my other machine. Been thinking about toying with 2.5 series kernels...


Cheers

ummmmmmmmm..............