That level of smoothness absolutely should be the norm. And not just 60fps, but ideally 120fps/144fps/higher (eg. new DisplayPort 1.4 240Hz monitors when they a

That level of smoothness absolutely should be the norm. And not just 60fps, but ideally 120fps/144fps/higher (eg. new DisplayPort 1.4 240Hz monitors when they are released). Every dropped frame, every timing inconsistency, is a small attack on your concentration. When a tool acts quickly and predictably you can treat it as a part of your own body (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_schema https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_schema ). When it responds slowly or inconsistently this requires conscious effort that could be better spent on solving the problem. For example, every libvte based terminal emulator is capped at approximiately 40fps. 40fps isn't even an integer multiple/divisor of any common refresh rate! It annoys me every time I see it, and it's symptomatic of the casual attitude to UI responsiveness that has modern software running worse than some ancient MS-DOS software did on a 386.