Disable the splash screen, I always do. Its in system settings around sessions, I think. You get to the desktop in a third the time but it might need a few seconds to be fully responsive. Also, nepomuk starting up will drastically slow down the boot time, so if you don't need the semantic search features disable it.
Really? It's 2013 and the login experience in Linux is that of windows 98? Login, but don't do anything until the disk led stops blinking like mad. Depressing...
Me, I've gone i3wm, but it's not for the faint of heart; And it still depends on lots of gnome utilities, like the network manager or the settings daemon.
It's 2013 and the login experience in Linux is that of windows 98? Login
It really depends on your WM. Some of the heavier desktops, yes. With the lighter ones (again, I use WindowMaker), I'm up and running in a couple of seconds (there are some apps and utilities which take a few seconds to launch).
The mouseless / tiling WMs (such as i3wm) are pretty cool as well.
