strace -p PID_OF_GNOME_TERMINAL shows that gnome-terminal is doing this kind of stuff a few times a second: poll([{fd=3, events=POLLIN, revents=POLLIN}], 1, -1) = 1 read(3, "\1\0\200\t\0\0\0\0\4\4\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\4\0\0\0\0\0\0\0"..., 32) = 32 ioctl(3, FIONREAD, [0]) = 0 gettimeofday({1157639079, 273142}, NULL) = 0 poll([{fd=3, events=POLLIN}, {fd=4, events=POLLIN}, {fd=8, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=10, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=11, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=12, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=13, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=14, events=POLLIN|POLLPRI}, {fd=16, events=POLLIN}], 9, 50) = 0 gettimeofday({1157639079, 323210}, NULL) = 0 ioctl(3, FIONREAD, [0]) = 0 gettimeofday({1157639079, 323456}, NULL) = 0 This is when cursor blinking is turned off, and there's no activity on a freshly started gnome-terminal. This is a similar problem to the ones tracked in bug #204948
there's not much that can be done about a blinking cursor.. that needs to happen. the only thing that can be done is to stop the blinking whenever possible.... like when the terminal isn't visible or .. maybe after like a few minutes of inactivity or whatever
(In reply to comment #1) > there's not much that can be done about a blinking cursor.. that needs to happen. Please note that these wakeups happen when the cursor blinking is turned OFF, and the terminal is not the selected window!
Upstreamed: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=354801
Looks like this is fixed? http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356552
Yes, should be fixed.