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Configuration

General System Tweaks

Sensible performance and memory tweaks for Genesi OS — most of which are already applied.

Genesi ships CachyOS's tuned defaults (cachyos-settings) — sane sysctl values, an I/O scheduler setup, fstrim for SSDs, and more are already applied. You don't need to tweak much. This page covers the few things worth knowing and adjusting per-machine.

zram (compressed swap in RAM)

Genesi uses zram — a compressed swap device in RAM — instead of, or in addition to, a disk swap partition. Check it:

zramctl
swapon --show

The size is configured in /etc/systemd/zram-generator.conf. The default (about half your RAM) suits most systems; you rarely need to change it.

Swappiness

Because swap lives in fast RAM (zram), a high swappiness actually helps — it keeps more of RAM available by compressing idle pages. CachyOS already sets a suitable value; to check or override:

cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
# override in a drop-in, e.g. /etc/sysctl.d/99-genesi.conf
#   vm.swappiness = 100

Apply changes without rebooting:

sudo sysctl --system

SSD maintenance

Weekly TRIM is handled by a timer — no action needed. Confirm it's on:

systemctl status fstrim.timer

CPU frequency governor

For a desktop on mains power, the performance governor removes ramp-up latency. Check the current governor:

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor

On a laptop, forcing performance hurts battery life and runs hot. Prefer the power tooling (power-profiles-daemon / TLP) that Genesi ships, and let it switch governors based on whether you're plugged in.

For the full catalogue of tuning knobs, the Arch Wiki: Improving performance and CachyOS: General System Tweaks articles apply directly to Genesi. Change one thing at a time and keep a snapshot to roll back to.