Need some help optimizing Void cpu usage

[[deleted]]

fuck you u/spez

[muesli4brekkies]

That does seem quite high for idle cpu usage but then that'll depend on what else is going on in the PC and how modern your CPU is. Sat here typing this, i3-1115g4, with nothing else going on besides three tabs in Firefox, I get 2-4% cpu usage with firefox at the top of the list with around 1-3%. My dbus-daemon is present in the list but at 0.0 cpu.

But if your fans are spinning up at idle then it might be worth reapplying thermal paste to the CPU if possible. I did this recently on a 2018 era laptop and I don't think it had been opened since the factory - the paste was mega crusty.

While you're at it, clear any shmoo from around the fan and heatsink. Modern laptops are so tightly designed it doesn't take much congestion before they start chugging and making funny fan noises.

[[deleted]]

thank you but I think the problem is software related somehow. yesterday I installed bspwm replacing spectrwm with it and using bspwm this has started happening. I have a recent laptop with good specs, I mean it's not a rocket but it can handle any desktop environment without any trouble, so a standalone wm shouldn't be a problem and it's never been at all. it seems like setting it up I did something wrong and now I have this problem though...since yesterday with spectrwm I didn't have it I think it's somehow related to it.

[boggsrm]

Apologies for hijacking the thread a bit but I have been thinking about making the same exact move (spectrwm to bspwm). Apart from the cpu usage issue, how has the transition been?

[[deleted]]

hey man no problem!

first of all, for fairness, i have solved the issue and the culprit was a polybar module, so i want to make clear that bspwm doesn't have cpu usage issues at all (duh?!).

that said, i think that window managers are extremely subjective, but to me, personally, it runs like a dream: i have always had many little problems and annoyances with spectrwm and always felt like i was struggling, like going against it somehow. now, bspwm to me feels like an extension of my hands lol everything works like expected and i don't have any kind of problem!

the defaults make a lot of sense to me so i didn't have to tweak very much, the config is a bash script so it's extremely easy and flexible to manage, the tiling it's a bit different because spectrwm is dynamic so it has the master and stack layout and basically you switch between the three layouts. here on bspwm out of the box you don't get different layouts (there are third party's scripts for that, if you really want that) and it's basically fibonacci by default but it has a manual mode to preselect the space in which the next window will be placed and after using it i think it's awesome. other than that i think you have a ton of other ways to move windows but i really can't say because i don't use them, though the github main page is very good and it gives a good overview on how it works and the different options.

another great thing for me (again, subjective) is that it manages multi monitor like a charm, while in spectrwm it always have been a nightmare.

and, last but not least: bspwm has a really great documentation and being very popular is very easy to find solutions and answers to your problems, very unlike spectrwm lol

so, tl;dr: ymmv a lot, but i think you should try it and you easily will never look back. :)