OT: why are LAMP sites slow?

[Paul Rubin]

Simon Wittber <simonwittber at gmail.com> writes:
> Slow is such an ambiguous term. Do you mean the pages are slow to
> render in a browser, or slow to be fetched from the server, or the
> server is slow to respond to requests? What is slow?

The server is slow to respond to requests.  Browser rendering is
independent of the server architecture and "slow to be fetched from
the server" sounds like it means low network speed.  I'm talking about
the very familiar experience of clicking a link and then waiting,
waiting, waiting for the page to load.  You rarely see that happen
with Ebay or Google.  It happens all the time with Wikipedia.