My System specs and speed review

A popular topic in the Linux world is how old of a computer can you run . So here are the specs on my computer:
Originally a Compaq Presario desktop

AMD Duron 900mHz CPU
370 MB of PC100 SDRAM - 3 slots with 128 MB each
Hard drive - Maxtor 20 GB D740X-6L
Some sort of network card with a blessed ethernet port - let's me run high speed DSL
CD/RW drive - on old one - I rarely use it

This computer is mainly used for surfing the internet and my boys playing games.

I'm currently running Ubuntu 7.10. My system keeps it up just fine. I don't exactly max it out all that much. I ran the system monitor one day and looked at it closely as I did various commands. I found out that the CPU seems to be the holdup. Most of the tasks I did rarely maxed out the RAM, but the CPU hung at 100% for a bit after almost everything I did.

GIMP - Change Image from Grayscale to RGB

This post is going to take a drastic turn from my other posts to date. I am currently teaching myself how to use the GIMP software. To my knowledge, GIMP stands for:

Gnu
Image
Manipulation
Program

It's an excellent image and photo editor and it's FREE. I've really been interested in the Linux and Free Software movement (call it what you like) in the past few years. One of my reasons for developing this hobby is that I give my entire paycheck away to the wife and children and that leaves about $0 left over for any of my hobbies or side ventures.

But a wonderful thing exists in this world. For one, good people around me who are kind enough to throw out their leftover computer parts and peripherals. From this (free) stuff, I have put together this computer from which I'm writing this post. Another wonderful thing - Linux, GIMP, Blender and all the other free software made readily available for all to partake. It continues to blow me away that so many people around the world would put so much work into something and then give it away for free.

On to the topic of this blog's title. Today I downloaded an image for use on a website. It was an outline of the states of the USA. I wanted something simple that I could fill a select color in select states. When I opened it up in GIMP and tried the Fill command, it kept giving me a gray color. Then I noticed on the header, it said the file was in "grayscale." I did an internet search to figure out how I could fill on this image in color. (Hey, you GIMP experts, cool it and sit down - I'm getting there.) So here's the command of the day that was the solution to this problem.

In the toolbar in the window of your image go to Image>Mode, then change to RGB. In the Mode pulldown menu, you can toggle between RGB, Grayscale and Indexed. Basically, RGB is color. Grayscale is black and white. Indexed is something more complicated. You'll have to search on your own for a better explanation.

Sorry for not citing references. I don't remember where I learned this. It's so elementary, and the GIMP is free, I'm sure it's ok.

But I will say that
http://gimp-tutorials.net/
has been an excellent resource so far.