I have an old Windows vista tower I upgraded to 7, with a dual boot to Ubuntu. It’s now plugged into my TV. I deleted one too many registery files, and wouldn’t you know it, the darn thing won’t boot anymore! And my old Ubuntu doesn’t seem to recognize my HDMI audio. I’ve decided the easiest plan is to completely wipe my HDD (how to do this, I’m not sure), and install a clean slate. But which OS the best? Best being the fastest boot times, and quickest to get me online and watching videos.
I literally want NOTHING but a Web browser with flash, Java, HTML 5, etc. Maybe bittorrent and a media player, but those aren’t necessary. Third party chromium builds I’ve seen boast no plug ins, so those don’t seem helpful. Otherwise I’d love to try that.
TL;DR What’s the easiest way to turn my old tower into a slim, fast booting Web browser?
Java is the hard part. If you don’t need that, your options are a lot better. If you want fast, you should sacrifice Java. Or did you mean JavaScript? Very few worthwhile things today actually use Java unless they’re business or scientific apps. The consumer-oriented WWW usually uses JavaScript, which Chrome and Firefox are both highly optimized for.
I think your best option is to actually stay with Windows 7 and keep the computer asleep instead of turning it off. Check your manual or Google around and see if has a restore mode that can restore everything to a factory clean slate – most modern pre-built systems do.
I suggest Windows because even something as simple as playing Netflix on Linux takes extra work. As for speed, a sleeping Windows 7 system should resume in seconds (but many Linuxes should too). Windows 8 might be even faster, but if it’s an old system, it doesn’t make sense to spend money upgrading. And in terms of power, most modern systems use less than 1-2 watts of power when asleep… you’re talking about $1 to $2 per year of electricity costs for that.
If you insist on going with Linux:
ChromeOS on x86 – lightning fast but unofficial, limited hardware support
Android on x86 – same as above, but with access to more apps, again limited hardware support
Vanilla (meaning naked, without additional addons) Chrome is plenty fast, and it includes an auto-updated built-in Flash that you never have to worry about. The latest Firefox is supposed to be fast too, though it never feels that way for me when loading. Use AdBlock Plus with Chrome and it’ll be much faster. Most slowness experienced by regular users on the web is caused by third-party Flash ads, not Chrome itself.
A better option is honestly to sell your computer on Craigslist. If you can get $50 to $100 for it, you can buy a Roku – faster and easier to use than a computer. And somebody else gets a computer that they actually wanted to use as a computer, rather than a bloated media box.