Not only does my Linux installation boot in under 30 seconds (SSD drives are great for that)
So, you compare Linux on an SSD to Windows on a mechanical drive -- seriously?
I should have just voted you down for spouting something so stupid, but you touched on something interesting without realizing it:
Most of the programs I use in Linux have functional Windows equivalents, but using Windows feels like trying to run in a dream.
This is more meaningful, but not for the reason you think.
Your problem, like all Linux users who try Windows, is that you don't follow the rule that "When in Rome, do as the Romans do".
Almost certainly, you tried some replica of your Linux toolchain: Cygwin, Bash, Perl, Python, PHP, or whatever, and you were "not surprised" that "Windows was slow" running software... designed for Linux. Meanwhile, Windows runs just fine running software designed for its architecture, but you probably never gave any of that a serious try. Visual Studio starts in a fraction of a second for me, complies practically instantly, and I've seen IIS put out 1100 dynamic web pages per second on my laptop, so I don't think it's all that slow. I've heard people complain that MS Word is "bloated", but it takes 200ms of CPU time to start. Bloated? I think not.
There are many subtle architectural reasons for this. Things like: "new process" is cheap on Linux, and used for what most programmers would call "threading", but on Windows it is a heavyweight activity that's not intended to be fast. Instead, "new thread" is the fast operation. Software has to be written to start few processes and many threads to perform well on Windows. It's only very recently that Linux got good support for high performance threads, so practically no Linux software is written like this. Every damned thing starts a new process for everything. Linux scripts treat "new process" as if it was lightweight enough to replace "call procedure". Meanwhile, Windows PowerShell starts a single process which calls functions directly from dynamically linked DLLs. That's because it's designed for Windows, unlike Bash.
Please, just shut up, and try Windows 7 x64 on a real machine with an SSD, run software on it designed for it, and only then come back and tell me that's it is slow.
See, it's a jump to conclusions mat... there's a mat with conclusion on it that you can jump to.
Both OSes on SSDs, the home (Users) partition on a mechanical drive or both OSes on mechanical drives; it makes no difference. Win7 x64 pegs the HD light on for several minutes during which I am helpless. The longest phase of the Linux boot is the POST process.
I have never used Cygwin, Bash, Perl, or PHP on Windows. When I say "functional equivalents" I mean, for example, Corel Aftershot which is a cross-platform RAW workflow suite. On Linux, it batch processes RAW files seamlessly in the background and adjustments/filters update in real-time. Everything happens slower on Windows. It doesn't matter what programs I use... RAW and video workflows are slower on my computer in Win7 x64 than Linux x64. I don't use Visual Studio or MS Word on any platform.
I'm really sorry that I have apparently deeply offended you. But on my computer regardless of what type of drive I boot to or what programs I use, video and RAW workflows are sluggish in Win7 compared to Linux. Web browsers take longer to launch. Even shutting down takes longer in Win7.