How to optimize Manjaro performance on an older laptop?

[tavigap337]

Hey guys…

I recently installed Manjaro XFCE on my older laptop (it’s about 6 years old, with 4GB RAM and an Intel i3 processor). The installation went smoothly, but I’ve noticed that the system can feel a bit sluggish at times, especially when running multiple applications.

I am wondering if there are any tweaks or settings that I could apply to optimize performance. I’ve already disabled some startup applications and set swappiness to 10, but I’m not sure if there’s more I could do.

I have not found any solution. Could anyone guide me about this? Would love to hear any advice from the community on improving speed and responsiveness on older hardware. Any particular tools or settings you recommend?

Thanks in advance!

Respected community member!

[cscs]

Hi and welcome,

Please start by providing system info.

You can do that with;

inxi -Farz

Or preferably send it to a pastebin with;

inxi -Farz | curl -F 'file=@-' https://0x0.st

Also for reference is a general guide including how to format code etc;

[HowTo] Request support

Difficulty: ★☆☆☆☆ Strong of its many members, the Manjaro support forum can provide you help whenever you have an issue with your Manjaro installation. But in order to work efficiently, we shall also ask you to follow three major points. Provide context Simply signaling an issue is rarely enough to understand how it occurred. It is thus important to provide details on how it happened: Detail prior actions leading to the issue. List solutions and guides you already tried, with links whene…

[Nachlese]

@tavigap337

and set swappiness to 10

first be sure you do actually have swap

… changing the swappiness is supposed to help you how?
I don’t think it will.

[Mirdarthos]

@tavigap337

I’ve already disabled some startup applications and set swappiness to 10

Mine is also set to 10.

$ sysctl vm.swappiness
vm.swappiness = 10

But I have 16GB of ram. I’d suggest enabling enough SWAP space, about 200% (8GB) of your current RAM, and leaving the swappiness at the default, which I think is 60.

[Kobold]

System Informations are always welcome.

inxi --admin --verbosity=5 --filter --no-host --width

@tavigap337

it’s about 6 years old, with 4GB RAM

I would probably download more RAM

[Teo]

Mabox linux is kind of manjato fork but instead of full desktop environment only with window manager. That would sava about a gig of ram, which is something you will feel if you only have 4.

[soundofthunder]

@Kobold

I would probably download more RAM

Is that a thing now?
I really must have been living under a rock.

@tavigap337

I agree, though, more RAM might be generally beneficial.

Upgrading the disk to perhaps an SSD, or even NVMe storage, might also enhance performance overall.

Note that these comments are without the benefit of knowing anything about your system. As already mentioned by @cscs and @Kobold, system information will be helpful to others; please post some.

Cheers.

---

@Teo

manjato

@Aragorn Another one for your collection.