Switching from web to desktop development
It just doesn't seem right to wait for a server response from a localhost

Exactly! Did you profile your app, both on server side and in browser? There's no reason for a local web app to be slow, except if it is designed or implemented suboptimally. Same applies to a desktop app, which is generally harder to create.
So, fire up your Firebug, do explain plan to every database query your app issues, add whatever profiling your PHP settings allow, and see where the problem lies. Most probably, it's not in the choice of language.
Being a web developer (php, symfony, doctrine) for 2 years now, I was recently asked by a friend to come up with a desktop solution. So I developed a project, installed a LAMP on his machine and he is mostly happy using it now. But I'm not. It just doesn't seem right to wait for a server response from a localhost. Obviously php isn't suited for desktop development. So, my question is: what language \ framework would you advice a php programmer if he was going to develop a desktop application (something that you can install, that has it's own gui, but utilizes the similar concepts of web apps: css, javascript, orm).
I would like to bring up Python as a possible answer to my question. Does anyone have an experience of developing a desktop app with Python, utilizing an ORM and(or) HTML-based GUI?