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bitzzdev edited this page Aug 7, 2026 · 2 revisions

Performance

bitzdots is specifically optimized for low-end machines. Here's the performance tuning guide.

Benchmarks

Metric Value
Idle RAM (full stack) ~250-300MB
Hyprland RAM ~170MB
swaync RAM ~85MB
Waybar RAM ~60MB
Waybar CPU ~3.5% idle
Polling intervals max 30s

Optimizations Applied

CPU

  • Polling intervals capped at 30s — No sub-second polling in any module
  • Workspaces use hyprctl workspaces -j instead of hyprctl clients -j (lighter query)
  • No playerctl metadata --follow leaks — Killed on media.sh startup
  • busctl over powerprofilesctl — The latter can hang at 100% CPU
  • Recording indicator uses pgrep — No file watchers or continuous processes
  • Cache daemon runs at Nice=19, idle IO — Never competes with foreground apps

RAM

  • SwayNC — show-album-art kept minimal to reduce album-art caching memory
  • Hyprland blur — Small blur size (5)
  • Minimal background services — No unnecessary daemons

GPU

  • Blur/shadows configurable — Disable for maximum performance (see below)
  • No excessive animations — Minimal fade animations only

Aggressive Low-End Profile

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

  1. Disable blur & shadows in hypr/appearance.lua:

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

  2. Remove runcat from waybar modules-left (Python process ~23MB)

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

  4. Remove album art from swaync notifications

  5. Disable animations in hypr/animations.lua:

    animations = { enabled = false }

Waybar Polling Intervals

Module Current Interval CPU Impact
Workspaces 2s Low (uses hyprctl workspaces -j)
Recording 10s Negligible
Network 3s Low
Clock 30s Negligible
CPU 5s Low (reads /proc/stat)
Memory 10s Negligible
Power Profiles 5s Negligible (D-Bus)
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 2
"custom/brightness": { "interval": 10 }, // was 5

Additional Tuning Tips

Kernel Parameters

Add to /etc/sysctl.d/99-performance.conf:

vm.swappiness=10
vm.vfs_cache_pressure=50
kernel.numa_balancing=0

CPU Governor

sudo cpupower frequency-set -g performance

Or use power-profiles-daemon with the waybar module to toggle on the fly (SUPER + waybar power-profile click).

Memory Optimization

# Check current RAM usage
free -h

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

On low-RAM systems (<2GB), add swap:

sudo fallocate -l 4G /swapfile
sudo chmod 600 /swapfile
sudo mkswap /swapfile
sudo swapon /swapfile
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

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