On Win95 vs. XWindows:

I've never botherd to time the boot-up of Win95 vs. Linux.  Since it's a  task 
I seldom perform, I don't think it really has much bearing on the usability 
of a system.  Boot-up takes too long for most systems, so we tend to leave 
them booted.

Still, I must admit that it may be a more pure measurement of the relative 
"bloat" and/or efficiency of the GUI and OS than the impressions I've had.

When I say Windows95 is a lot faster on the same hardware, I realize I'm 
usually talking about applications within the different OS's.  How long it 
takes a browser to load, how long it takes a file browser to display a 
directory.  That's not really a measure of either Windows95 or of XWindows, 
but more of the Application in question.  Still, given that, the applications 
in question do both load and respond faster on Win95 than on Linux.  This is 
true even of operations which should be mostly OS-based, like browsing local 
files.

(Further comments on W95 taken off-list, because ther're not on topic here.)