Comment 7 for bug 418726

Hmmm. I agree, this bug is a duplicate of 322113, because the main problem reported is the slow startup without visual feedback.
Anyway, something interesting was told about the fonts problem: other programs seem to store the font list in a cache.
The first time you run gimp it registers the fonts, and its startup is noticeably slower than the following ones.
A splash screen with visual feedback would be nice, but if one of the causes of our slow startups is the fonts list, it should be revised.