If you just installed Ubuntu 12.04 or 12.10 (any version actually, but these are the 2 I've tested this on), you may notice that opening gedit, the default text editor in Ubuntu, takes a long time. When I say a long time, I mean anywhere from 3 to 10 seconds. To make gedit open a lot faster, do the following:

• In gedit, go to Edit > Preferences > Plugins
• Disable "File Browser Panel" plugin (this is the one causing the delayed start)
• While you're at it, disable any other plugins that you don't need

For more info on the File Browser Panel plugin and what it does, see this link:

https://live.gnome.org/Gedit/Plugins/FileBrowser