They booted at exactly the same speed and opened photoshop and solidworks at the same rate as well from start.
But opening Photoshop and Solidworks on Windows is hardly representative of how I use my system!
For example I'm using lots of VMs and containers and "images", which I often manipulate as "big files" that I need to copy around.
I do both regularly copy huge files and search among about 500 K files for "stuff" (not files that are 500 K big: 500 000 files that I need to search things): either just by name of by content.
I've seen test done on YouTube, not by me, showing the Samsung 960 EVO 500 GB (NVMe / M.2) vs the Crucical MX300 525 GB (Sata 3, 530 Mb/s read / 510 Mb/s write) where a big file (8 GB I think) copy was taking 37 seconds on the NVMe and 1 minute 30 seconds for the Sata 3 drive. I can find the link if needed.
That's a 3x difference to copy a big file. I do regularly copy big files. I'm not sure it's only "perception". Same test for gaming gave identical game startup time, so no gain there.
Data fragmentation
No, I'm on Linux: fragmentation typically ain't an issue.
Old software bloating boot time
Nope, similar setups. Super slick init files which I'm always in full control: I hardly ever any launch any service / software at boot.
Other drives taking time away from sata controller
Nope a single drive, nothing on SATA controller, not even CD/DVD readers/burners.
Network loads taking up drive time
Nope, my system boots in exactly the same time whether the network is available or not. Fixed IP address (no DHCP, no nothing).
OS differences...
No, same Linux version on both, same install. I basically have got a "scripted" install procedure which I reproduce on my workstation everytime so I always have basically the system configured the same way.
Basically: it's not because for some or most uses on Windows (like gaming or opening Photoshop) there's no speedup that nobody is seeing speedups in their own use cases...
Maybe I should take the time to buy a high-end Sata 3 SSD and install the exact same system and do a few comparisons. Then we'd see if it's perception or not. But I'm pretty confident that I'd see noticeable differences both when copying huge files around and when doing searches on the entire user(s) directories, which is where I'm "perceiving" the difference.