As it turns out, GTK 4 programs start up *a lot* faster by setting the environment variable `GSK_RENDERER=cairo`. Even the most simple GTK 4 program that shows nothing but a blank window spends a) tons of times populating `~/.cache/mesa_shader_cache` on the first run, b) considerably less but still lots of time initializing DRI on consecutive runs. Apparently, both these things can be avoided by setting that variable. That's good news for the GTK 4 port of [xiate], I think. With that variable set, terminal windows now start up reasonably fast. Of course, that means that the terminal can't use OpenGL during runtime, but why would we need that? (I never understood that about Alacritty or kitty. Unless you're doing benchmarks, this doesn't matter at all.) So ... I guess I'll do some more work on that GTK 4 port now. [xiate]: https://uninformativ.de/git/xiate