After reading the post Kernel-Log-What-s-coming-in-2-6-30-File-systems-New-and-revamped-file-systems--/news/113157, I saw improvements were made to problems with the Linux kernel regarding slowness under heavy disk I/O.
After running 2.6.30-rc3, my computer no longer grinds to a halt under large amounts of disk I/O.
My only legitimate reason to abandon Linux for another OS ( BSD, Solaris ) has been resolved.
