With 30 packages, what you've got is a toy, perhaps a single-purpose embedded installation, not a useful OS; and IMO the knowledge required to curate such minimalism has a high cost. I spend far more time updating a ~40G Linux installation than I do Windows - Ubuntu's package manager accosts me at least once a week. At least the pestering for reboots is a lot easier to ignore - I have a script in a loop on Windows, after once losing work to an ill-timed reboot prompt stealing focus.
EFI BIOS is know for a slightly worse performance for linux vs windows
No shit. I wasted a whole day - last Friday, to be exact - figuring out how to get Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS working on a modern UEFI machine with full disk encryption and Nvidia graphics card. UEFI doesn't supply old BIOS text routines, and Ubuntu GRUB2 defaults don't work, such that when you switch from nouveau's hilariously unstable drivers (hard X.Org crash if you move windows too quickly) to nvidia-current you don't get a prompt at boot-up to enter your password - just a black screen of apparent death. You have to configure a framebuffer that works with the Nvidia card and live with NVRM's kernel log warnings about only supporting VGA text consoles.
Most of all I really resent Ubuntu forcing me to learn how all these pieces are put together, so I could fix it. Using it as a desktop OS daily, I remain more convinced than ever that it is best put to work via an ssh session in a different OS. The command-line is the only UI on it that reliably works.