I have two nearly identical machines side by side. One Windows 7 and the other Linux Mint. I use them both a lot. I like Linux Mint, and I don't really mind Windows 7. That said, I find that Linux Mint runs noticeably slower than Windows 7. The applications themselves seem to run at comperable speeds, but it just seems to take a lot longer for Linux to load and launch an application. There's a noticeable delay after I click an icon before Linux reacts to the click. I still like it, and will continue to use it, I just find it mildly annoying that it seems more sluggish than Windows 7. When I'm ready to dive in to an ap it seems like I have to wait for Linux to catch up with me.

Some Linux hardware drivers are slower than their Windows counterparts, especially when hardware manufactures work hand-in-hand with Microsoft or Apple and do not release complete hardware specs.

In that case Linux has to revert to legacy drivers that do not take full advantage of the new hardware's capabilities.

Linux is always playing catch-up. For less common hardware Linux may never catch up. No one will ever go to the trouble of writing optimized drivers for this hardware.

My desktop machine runs Debian. I also have a Chromebook and a dual-boot laptop that runs Windows 10 and Debian.

My Chromebook gets the heaviest use. I haven't used the Windows laptop since March, when covid limited my travels.

so I have to stretch a long cable across the room to physically plug into the Internet.

It's very similar to the way software modems were many years ago. You could get some "WinModems" to work in Linux, but not others. I gave up and always used full feature external modems attached to the serial port.

Buying a USB wifi dongle that claims to be "Linux compatible" and recognized out of the box by Linux Mint and other Ubuntu based Linux distributions seems to be a crap shoot as well. I once bought one on Amazon and it wasn't plug-and-play, of course. It did come with some incomprehensible translated-by-google Chinese instructions on how to use ndiswrapper which is now obsolete.

To get most wifi dongles to work in Linux you have to find out what chip set they use and download the appropriate drivers, likely from a "non-free" or dirty repository. Some of these drivers are dirty because they violate copyright and other intellectual property laws, which is amusing if the wifi dongle itself is a rip-off of someone else's intellectual property.

I have a Panda wireless dongle that works without much fuss, as I recall, but only if I installed the ralink drivers during the original Debian install when it was requested. Linux mint or Ubuntu are said to recognize these without any trouble.

Penguin usb wireless dongle are specifically branded for Linux but they are expensive, starting at $35. I have a random $5 usb dongle that uses the same chipset ( or knock-off ) as the Penguin which also works well.

I eventually got the built in wifi working on my widows laptop working when it was booted into Linux but I didn't take notes on how I did it. I do remember it was an irritating process.

I put Linux Mint on an old laptop and the WiFi worked seamlessly.

The delay isn't a fault of the OS, its because of your PC hardware.

Two identical machines, side by side. One Windows, one Linux. Windows runs faster. Period. End of sentence.

Now explain to me why it is the fault of my hardware. I realize that is the answer you are wishing for, but what we wish for and reality sometimes do not agree.

half baked software substitutes are not good enough for design work