[racket] tool performance: Windows vs Linux

Offhand, I don't know why you're seeing such a big difference, then.

Regarding various ways that filesystem is cached in RAM, I consistently 
see a big improvement in Racket startup times when there's caching.  
Maybe you're using SSD?  This is typical for my setup:

[~] time racket -e '(void)'

real    0m1.931s
user    0m0.620s
sys    0m0.132s
[~] time racket -e '(void)'

real    0m0.484s
user    0m0.404s
sys    0m0.076s
[~] time racket -e '(void)'

real    0m0.485s
user    0m0.420s
sys    0m0.060s
[~] echo 3 | sudo tee /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
3
[~] time racket -e '(void)'

real    0m2.347s
user    0m0.556s
sys    0m0.208s
[~] time racket -e '(void)'

real    0m0.481s
user    0m0.416s
sys    0m0.060s
[~]

Side point: I generally encourage programmers to run GNU/Linux (without 
Gnome bloat) as their main workstation, unless they're developing 
specifically for Windows or Mac.  Windows itself might not be the cause 
of your current problem, but it's the cause of similar problems.

Neil V.