I'm so glad this one reached the top page in HN. It's our chance to talk about it.
I've been using Linux on my personal and professional desktops since 2006. I really enjoyed when Ubuntu got its presence and relevance in the scene, and I didn't mind when they decided to adopt Unity. KDE has always been my preferred option until I read an article where Linus T. said he used Gnome. So by the time I moved to Gnome I also doubled by RAM and swapped to a SSD. Those were the happiest days in my life. Using a computer was a real joy mainly because of response times brought down to nearly zero. OpenOffice, Files, browsers, and IMs were loaded before you could notice you had released the mouse button. I even started to advertise this terminology among friends and family: "instant computing experience". It was my own way to describe experience to Windows users who still had to wait seconds for things to load on their screens.
Those were the gold pre-UEFI days. Machines were shipped OEM with Windows 7, which you could swipe out and replace with your favorite Linux ditro. No strings attached, no major headaches etc. Of course, some would have to struggle to make some hardware work, but once those things were sorted out and optimized, again: pure joy.
I'm writing this because I hate UEFI. It made my life difficult because I have a hard time whenever I decide to install Linux on any new machine. Double or single boot, it doesn't matter.
Today the so-called "instant computing experience" is just as a memory in my head. I'm stuck with Windows 10 and trying to get used to the fact applications take time to load. I wave to wait. I wait for the OS to start up. I wait until it resumes from sleeping mode. I wait for everything.
I'm waiting for a definitive solution to the UEFI problem either from Ubuntu or from the community. Desperately!