Well, while linking in linux is slower, one minute is quite a lot.
What are ˙ou linking and what is the hardware?
Possible solution is to compile in debug mode as SO (packages are compiled into shared libraries). It is however possible that in current dev version shared mode is brokem.
That is quite strange. I will checks my link times ASAP and report.
BTW, it is "SO" ("All shared") mode, not "SHARED" ("Use shared libs").
If you are building with debug info, I think you should be able to reduce link times by deactivating debug info for individual packages (again, in Output mode).
Another thing to check is whether your SATA drive works at full speed (possible driver problem?).