petera, Thanks again for the help! I think I will first attack the performance issues with the gui and also with the cm19 by returning/replacing my Pi zero W board as I seem to be the only one having these issues and in that case it most likely is a defective Pi.
Forgive me if I'm veering off here but will just throw out my experience. I started with the Pi Zero W board and the .iso provided by Tuicemen. Just using the HG gui, I could never get a reliable control over any of my X10 devices. At best I would have to send two commands to get a light to turn on/off. Sometimes it would take more.
My Pi Zero was located about 6 feet away from my wireless AP, so I don't think that was the trouble. I also had some other problems, but generally the Pi Zero just seemed slow, like it is struggling and working too hard.
So I started it all over over, this time with a Pi 3 B+. I knew that Tuicemen's .iso wouldn't install cleanly on the 3, so steeled myself to make a go of it from scratch. This was daunting as I've never had any Linux experience.
Anyway, I have the full Stretch version of Raspberry installed and have installed HG. The Pi is attached directly to the network, thanks to this model having a network connector.
Everything is working very well. It has been totally reliable, no hiccups, and is surprisingly speedy and robust.
The last step now is to get HA-Bridge installed and working with Alexa. This step is a bit daunting for me, but probably made more difficult simply due to my unfamiliarity with Linux.
Once this is accomplished, I can turn off the PC that I've had running 24/7 for years!