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| -rw-r--r-- | man/i3status.man | 33 |
1 files changed, 33 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/man/i3status.man b/man/i3status.man index fb1bbf4..78cec3e 100644 --- a/man/i3status.man +++ b/man/i3status.man @@ -288,6 +288,39 @@ is set to +xmobar+. i3status | xmobar -o -t "%StdinReader%" -c "[Run StdinReader]" --------------------------------------------------------------------- +== What about memory usage or CPU frequency? + +While talking about two specific things, please understand this section as a +general explanation why your favorite information is not included in i3status. + +Let’s talk about memory usage specifically. It is hard to measure memory in a +way which is accurate or meaningful. An in-depth understanding of how paging +and virtual memory work in your operating system is required. Furthermore, even +if we had a well-defined way of displaying memory usage and you would +understand it, I think that it’s not helpful to repeatedly monitor your memory +usage. One reason for that is that I have not run out of memory in the last few +years. Memory has become so cheap that even in my 4 year old notebook, I have +8 GiB of RAM. Another reason is that your operating system will do the right +thing anyway: Either you have not enough RAM for your workload, but you need to +do it anyway, then your operating system will swap. Or you don’t have enough +RAM and you want to restrict your workload so that it fits, then the operating +system will kill the process using too much RAM and you can act accordingly. + +For CPU frequency, the situation is similar. Many people don’t understand how +frequency scaling works precisely. The generally recommended CPU frequency +governor ("ondemand") changes the CPU frequency far more often than i3status +could display it. The display number is therefore often incorrect and doesn’t +tell you anything useful either. + +In general, i3status wants to display things which you would often look at +anyways, like the current date/time, whether you are connected to a WiFi +network or not, and if you have enough disk space to fit that 4.3 GiB download. + +However, if you need to look at some kind of information more than once in a +while (like checking repeatedly how full your RAM is), you are probably better +of with a script doing that, which pops up an alert when your RAM usage reaches +a certain threshold. + == External scripts/programs with i3status In i3status, we don’t want to implement process management again. Therefore, |