> So, I don't know where the "too slow" meme is coming from Perhaps the parent commenter is executing `pdftex` on Windows. Like all Windows ports of UNIX/Linux

> So, I don't know where the "too slow" meme is coming from Perhaps the parent commenter is executing `pdftex` on Windows. Like all Windows ports of UNIX/Linux-first software, LaTeX experiences the double whammy of the NT kernel being slow with small files + Windows Defender scanning. NTFS is not at fault, oddly enough: it works fast enough in Linux with the recent in-kernel NTFS3 driver. I use the same distribution (MiKTeX) on both Windows and Linux, and Linux is easily 10× as fast as Windows when compiling complex files (TikZ graphs and diagrams, `.bib` files, internal hyperlinks, etc).