RDP quit forwarding rendering commands some time ago,[1] it turns out to be faster to just send a compressed image. On very low bandwidth links effects are turned off and a limited color pallet is used.

You're still right -- the performance is good, and using normal UI controls you will typically not notice even a very poor connection. But this is because UI changes are an "eventually consistent" deal, and although the Windows terminal services implementation does send bitmaps it optimizes drawing for sending the resulting bitmap. Contrast to scrolling text on a terminal that may not update in a manner that allows you to react to it.

[1]: Somewhere on the FreeRDP mailing list. Sorry :(

Not to mention the fact that just about no program uses the old Win32 rendering commands anymore for anything relevant. They are just far too limited.

> And the basic latency (e.g. for typing text or clicking a menu) is the same as terminal latency too.

If "terminal latency" is the high watermark, it doesn't bring pleasant thoughts to mind. I find typing over ssh to be irritating. Not awful, but a clear downgrade from a local terminal.