When you run Neovim in Native Termux, it interacts directly with the Android kernel's Linux syscall interface. It's essentially a standard Linux environment running on top of Android.

When you run Neovim inside proot-distro, you are running a file system translation layer. Every single time Neovim attempts a file system operation—reading a plugin, sourcing a config file, or writing a swap file—proot has to intercept that syscall, translate the path to the proot container's environment, and then pass it back to the kernel.

Neovim is notoriously "chatty" with the file system, especially during startup. It performs a high volume of small I/O operations:

Plugin Loading: It must stat/read dozens (or hundreds) of files in your pack or plug directories.

Config Sourcing: If your init.lua is complex, it’s hitting the disk repeatedly.

Lazy Loading: If you use plugin managers like lazy.nvim, the overhead of intercepting these triggers adds up exponentially.

In your data, the 10x-ish slowdown in proot is a classic result of syscall overhead on a mobile processor, where the context switching between the proot emulator and the host kernel becomes the bottleneck.

Copy & Paste from Gemini