advice, pictures/images and performance

[Patrick <patrick spellingbeewinnars org>]

Hi Everyone

I am very excited today. I have been trying to write free programs to 
help disabled children communicate but I have been stuck with touch 
screen monitors and desktops as I really only know how to program on 
Linux(and I don't really want to change if I don't have to).

Today I got Ubuntu loaded on an HP Stream x360 and everything I need is 
working just fine and now I have a portable solution.

I am running a GTK program that I originally wrote on a multicore core 
machine, it's a bit sluggish with only 2GB RAM and a slower processor. I 
am going to try and rework it. It currently loads PNG images.

Do images load much faster if they are compiled in as pixmaps? Could 
anyone give me some pointers on improving response time when there are 
lots of images to contend with?

Thanks for reading my post-Patrick