I'm seriously thinking about going back to Windows XP on my little laptop here. For two reasons:

1. Ubuntu 9.04 / Gnome appears to run sluggishly. Is it the EXT4 file system? Is it some optimization I haven't discovered? I have no idea. Since part of the reason of giving Linux a go was to experience a lean, mean OS with no cruft, it seems just wrong to me. 

2. I'm not really having much fun. I thought it would be fun to dabble and learn and maybe even get MonoDevelop and ASP.NET working. Well it's not fun at all. It's tedious. There is much that I don't understand and what little time I have left over for this kind of activity is spent trying to find exactly the right blog post that explains something.

I want my comfort zone back.