Have you even had Control-C take forever to kill that `cat` you accidentally ran against a 1GB log file? I have. Most terminal emulators are 'dumb' and try to render the whole backbuffer sequentially even if what you are seeing is no longer the tail of the output stream.
It's not so much that this is 'fast' (because even gnome-terminal which is not what I'd call crazy fast is 'fast enough' most days), but that it's much more responsive as a result. By locking the terminal refresh to your screen refresh rate and only rendering 'current' data this removes a lot of headaches you can run into with other terminal emulators (like the aforementioned cat of a 1GB text file).
I've done that (we all did), but "can't reproduce". So this seems to depend a lot on the emulator, eg. I'm using Konsole, which is superb, and don't see that problem there.
Konsole is the only emulator I've used (other than actual tty) that doesn't have this problem. It's actually been frustrating, becasue there is plenty about it that I don't like.
I'll be giving Alacritty a try shortly - if it does what it says on the tin, it's exactly what I've been looking for.
Thanks, though I've been on linux for the last couple of years.
On the mac side I had other performance issues with Terminal.app (particularly when using all of widescreen + tmux - lots of flicker during move/refresh operations). iTerm2 did well for me though, iirc.
The only real issue I run into is clipboard wonkiness when console apps integrate the clipboard (nvim+twmux).
Beyond that, it has a ton of features - none of which I use since I manage my sessions with tmux. So I guess it's mostly a matter of not wanting a sledgehammer when the right tool is a finishing hammer?
I use nvim inside Konsole/Yakuake and I don't have any issue with the clipboard.
"+p and "+y works fine
Also Shift+Inst and Shift+Supr keeps working fine.
It's not so much that this is 'fast' (because even gnome-terminal which is not what I'd call crazy fast is 'fast enough' most days), but that it's much more responsive as a result. By locking the terminal refresh to your screen refresh rate and only rendering 'current' data this removes a lot of headaches you can run into with other terminal emulators (like the aforementioned cat of a 1GB text file).