BUG: gnome terminal horrible performance

[Florin Andrei <florin andrei myip org>]

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=148796

Why does gnome-terminal takes so many resources to perform trivial tasks
such as scrolling text up?

Experiment: Run gnome-terminal and xterm side by side.

Do a "cat filename" on a very large file in each one of them and see
which one is faster.
xterm can be faster by orders of magnitude (i'm not making things up).

Compile an application that makes gcc very verbose in each terminal.
With gnome-terminal, the overall system load is significantly higher.

Run a "tail -f" on a log file, while at the same time running a time-
and load-sensitive application such as any digital sound recorder
(Ardour with JACK) or sequencer (Rosegarden, Muse).
If "tail -f" runs in gnome-terminal, and the time-critical app does not
run with real-time privileges, parts of the sound stream will get
dropped. The drops occur at a much lower frequency (if at all) when
running "tail -f" in xterm.

I mean, gnome-terminal is nice and all, but why is it such a huge
resource hog?

I am not the first one to raise a flag on this issue. gnome-terminal
essentially makes it difficult to do time-critical work on a Gnome
workstation.
I actually avoid using it.

Any plans to fix this bug?

-- 
Florin Andrei

http://florin.myip.org/