In case anyone is really interested in seeing some actual numbers. On my system, using the default system Monospace 11 font: ls -lR / in urxvt terminal window

In case anyone is really interested in seeing some actual numbers. On my system, using the default system Monospace 11 font: ls -lR / in urxvt terminal window - 16 s vs ls -lR / in gnome-terminal window - 3m17s ls was run several times to make sure all information was cached. Same font, same window size, etc.