try using gifs, or pngs instead of jjpegs, they both are palletted and are smaller image sizes with minor reduction in image quality. ( higher pallete numbers make better quality but larger images. )
another idea would be to use xhtml, which is the actual standard now, xml and html combined, using css, and a lot of the content only plain text files, look being in the css and markup rather than all in one.
w3c.org has the specs, and links to tuts for using xhtml, as well as the dtd for site validation.
linux format itself isn't bad, join the free forums for a bit, by the fith or sixth page it really does bog down, even on high speed. ( it's actually frequently complained about in thier forums )