Videochat March 2019

Thanks a bunch for the suggestions.  I am probably going to go for LMDE for that performance boost.  It looks like it'll come out-of-the-box pretty much how I need it aside from needing to do a few driver tweaks.  I visited the website and watched a few videos on Linux Mint earlier today, and it looks rather elegant.  

I will probably play with an installation over the weekend if I don't get some free-time later this week.  I plan to use it dual boot for now until Microsoft actually kills 7. 

Always happy to help.

I tried LMDE, but realized I didn't like it not being built upon Ubuntu as I am most familiar with that family of distros.  I chose Linux Mint MATE since it focuses more on performance than Cinnamon.  I get very good performance out of it, but have to use open source drivers as the proprietary ATI drivers can't seem to be installed.  I am not sure why.  It could just be the hardware is just old.  It has a Radeon Xpress X1200 series onboard graphics card, and it seems to have a lot of problem with modern operating systems.  I know this system is on borrowed time.  Makes me wonder if I should reinstall Linux with the Xfce version just to get maximum performance.  I will play with MATE for awhile and see how I like it before making that decision.  I've learned, over the years, Linux takes time to customize and tailor to your desires, so I will just mess around for awhile and see if I run into any big issues.

The one big problem I have with Linux is its font rendering.  I miss not having Cleartype quality rendering.  It is not a big deal on Linux's native fonts, but I have to use the TrueType and ClearType fonts for a lot of the projects I work on, so the standard font rendering in Linux can make it look strange unless zoomed in.  There was this replacement font rendering software called Infinality I used to use; however, it appears to be very outdated now, and the PPA is probably vulnerable.  

Overall, I could see Linux Mint being a replacement once Windows 7 reaches EOL/EOS.  It's quite nice, and I can probably just tweak these small issues I'm having.  I may do a live-boot of the Xfce version just to see how it runs differently.  It may be worth a switch from MATE just for that extra reduction in RAM footprint. 

Glad you're enjoying it.