but don't mash it

I was getting all settled into Fedora 16 on my laptop, the graphics card seems to produce screen glitches especially when using the menus in Firefox and a few other apps. This appears to indicate that overlapping windows and menus are a problem. Reluctantly I hosed Fedora and installed Mint. Mint runs a tad slower but without glitches. Mint has the same Gnome Shell but I noticed like I said before Debian application repositories have all the popular apps and supplies the video codecs that Fedora doesn't. I think Fedora supplies a Nvidia equivalent video card driver that is not as good as the real Nvidia drivers in Mint.

I partitioned the hard drive so that I can install another Linux without blinking. The home directory in it's own partition, the OS in it's own. I just reformat the OS partition when needed. The optimal thing would be a big USB flash drive for personal files. Then I could move the flash around to different Pc's. The secret is that the hidden files with your personal settings and configurations are in your home directory. If the new installation has the same applications it starts up already configured. This is handy for browser bookmarks, email addresses and multimedia codecs.

I am hedging about drawing, guess I'm not in the mood. So I have a Java app called SweetHome 3D. This app allows you to draw a floor plan in a 2D view while it draws the wall elevations in 3D in another view. Then you can add furniture and textures assignments in the 2D to appear in the 3D. The constructed views are not too good but if you run them through rendering software they become more photo realistic. I plan to model the art gallery space and come up with display ideas.

When you utilize used hardware you never know how much wear-n-tear you've inherited. I have many 'oh darn it' moments. Save your pennies, plan for the long haul and buy good stuff brand new when the opportunity hits. Back at the art gallery we are going to take some old PC's, set up a PC arts teaching platform and then begin to replace them with new hardware as monies are available. The point is that we start now, not wait. Why wait till we can get top shelf when the lower rungs are available. Yeah, we want Macs but PC's will do fine. I was in a company when it switched from pen-n-ink drafting to CAD on workstations. Then another company that transitioned through 2 upgrades of CAD systems. Waiting to pay for the best is overrated when used PC's and free Open Source art software is available now. Build your skills, transition if you must, get down tonite, get down tonite!