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Performance Optimization

bitzdots is designed for low-end hardware. This guide explains the optimizations and shows how to push further.

Current Baseline

Metric Value
Idle RAM (full stack) ~250-300MB
Waybar CPU ~3.5% idle
Hyprland RAM ~170MB
swaync RAM ~85MB
waybar RAM ~60MB

Per-Component Optimization

Waybar Polling Intervals

All intervals are tuned to balance responsiveness and CPU usage:

Module Current Interval CPU Impact
Workspaces 3s Low (uses hyprctl workspaces -j, not clients)
Recording 10s Negligible
Network 10s Low
Clock 30s Negligible
CPU 5s Low (reads /proc/stat)
Memory 10s Negligible
Power Profiles 30s Negligible (D-Bus, no hanging)
Brightness 5s Low (timeout 2s on brightnessctl)
Notification 10s Negligible
Media on-event Only updates on player change

To reduce CPU further, increase intervals in waybar/config.jsonc:

"custom/workspaces": { "interval": 5 },  // was 3
"custom/brightness": { "interval": 10 }, // was 5

Media Player (playerctl)

The media script kills stale playerctl metadata --follow processes on startup to prevent the well-known CPU leak where multiple instances accumulate.

If you don't use media controls, remove custom/media from modules-left in waybar config.

Power Profiles

Uses busctl directly on the UPower D-Bus interface instead of powerprofilesctl. The latter is known to randomly hang at 100% CPU when querying profiles. The D-Bus approach is instant and has zero CPU overhead.

Blur & Visual Effects

Configurable in hypr/appearance.lua:

blur = {
    enabled = true,   -- set false to save ~20-40MB GPU memory
    size = 5,         -- lower = less memory
    passes = 1,       -- lower = less GPU work
}

For maximum performance:

blur = { enabled = false }
shadow = { enabled = false }

SwayNC

Notification center RAM usage is ~85MB, largely from album art caching in the MPRIS widget.

Optimization available in swaync/config.json:

"mpris": {
    "show-album-art": "notification",  // "always" shows art in control center
    "image-size": 48                    // lower = less memory (default 64)
}

Runcat (Python)

The custom/runcat module uses a Python script with pyjson5 dependency (~23MB RSS for the Python process).

To disable: Remove custom/runcat from modules-left in waybar config.

Aggressive Low-End Profile

For systems with <2GB RAM or single-core CPUs:

  1. Disable blur in hypr/appearance.lua:

    blur = { enabled = false }

  2. Remove runcat from waybar modules

  3. Increase all polling intervals in waybar config by 2-3x

  4. Remove album art from swaync:

    "show-album-art": "never"

  5. Disable shadows in Hyprland:

    shadow = { enabled = false }

  6. Use a lighter terminal than kitty (e.g., foot or wezterm) — kitty uses ~200MB per window

  7. Disable animations in hypr/animations.lua:

    hl.config({ animations = { enabled = false } })

CPU Optimization

Process Management

  • Wallpaper cache daemon runs at Nice=19 (lowest priority), IO scheduling class=idle
  • All waybar scripts are shell-based (no heavy interpreters except runcat's Python)
  • playerctl metadata --follow leak prevention via pkill on media.sh startup
  • workspaces.sh uses hyprctl workspaces -j instead of the heavier hyprctl clients -j

Active CPU Reduction Tips

# Check current CPU usage by component
ps aux --sort=-%cpu | head -10

# Find and kill stale playerctl processes
ps aux | grep playerctl

# Check if powerprofilesctl is hanging
pgrep -a powerprofilesctl

Memory Optimization

Active Memory Reduction Tips

# Check current RAM usage
free -h

# Per-process memory
ps aux --sort=-%mem | head -15

# SwayNC memory breakdown
pmap $(pgrep -x swaync) | tail -5

Swap Recommendations

On low-RAM systems (<2GB):

# Increase swap for safety
sudo fallocate -l 4G /swapfile
sudo chmod 600 /swapfile
sudo mkswap /swapfile
sudo swapon /swapfile

# Make permanent
echo '/swapfile none swap defaults 0 0' | sudo tee -a /etc/fstab

Benchmarking

# Measure full stack idle memory
free -h

# Measure per-component memory
for p in Hyprland swaync waybar kitty; do
  ps -o rss,comm -C "$p" | tail -1
done

# Measure CPU over 30 seconds
top -b -n 30 -d 1 | grep -E 'Hyprland|waybar|swaync'