It would appear that I had, in fact, inadvertantly updated gnome- terminal and libvte using the compiz repo. I 'downgraded' to the one in the official repo and all seems well. Thanks for the suggestion.
-- Gnome-terminal redraws very slowly after update https://launchpad.net/bugs/58485 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
