Vim in terminal is slow

Question

I'm using vim in the terminal a log and I'm getting frustrated with its slow performance. I'm on Debian Jessie using Gnome.

If I open a file in vim do a block select and I to insert on multiple lines there is always a delay from when I press esc to when the change is inserted.

If I do the the same thing in gvim the change is imidiate.

I have tried adding

set ttyfast
set lazyredraw

In my ~/.vimrc but that does not make any noticeable difference.

$ vim --verion
VIM - Vi IMproved 7.4 (2013 Aug 10, compiled Nov 20 2015  15:31:14)
Included patches: 1-930  

Answer 1

This is completely normal.

In Vim, some special keys (like the cursor keys) are implemented as <Esc> followed by some other character. Therefore, Vim waits a bit after your press <Esc> to determine if you actually wanted <Esc> or if you wanted something else like <Esc>A (<Up>).

See :help 'timeout', :help 'timeoutlen', :help 'ttimeout', and :help 'ttimeoutlen'.