In GNOME 46, VTE (Virtual TErminal library) saw significant performance improvements, particularly in input latency, making terminal applications more responsive. Using a hardware input latency tester, the author measured the latency of various terminals such as Alacritty, Console, VTE Test App, and GNOME Terminal. Results showed that VTE-based terminals caught up with Alacritty in terms of speed, thanks to optimizations like drawing every frame synchronized with the monitor. The vtebench suite also highlighted improvements in PTY read and parsing performance in VTE during GNOME 46. Overall, the performance enhancements in VTE make it worth revisiting VTE-based terminals for a smoother user experience.
https://bxt.rs/blog/just-how-much-faster-are-the-gnome-46-terminals/