It’s true, but the effect is still much less pronounced on Linux than Windows. Opening a web browser, for instance, is usually a lot faster in Linux than opening the same browser in Windows.

Part of the problem is everyone building on common libraries that themselves build on libraries, leading to layer after layer of abstraction with a little loss of efficiency at each one. Since most software is cross-platform, this affects multiple operating systems. And needing to build for multiple platforms is itself one of the drivers of all this abstraction.