I rolled racket back to v8.7 [cs] (from snapshot.debian.org), and the performance is as expected:
$ /usr/bin/racket --version Welcome to Racket v8.7 [cs]. $ time /usr/bin/racket -e '(exit)' real 0m2.667s user 0m2.179s sys 0m0.436s i also tried 8.13+dfsg1-2 8.12+dfsg1-10 But they both take 3 1/2 minutes. -- Humberto Ortiz Zuazaga Programmer Archaeologist
