So if someone wanted to use an old crappy laptop as a media box, what would the best linux distro be?
All I need it to do is read an external hard drive, run VLC to play DVDs and video files, and connect to TV via HDMI.
Note: This laptop is absolute trash. It runs like shit and even with Ubuntu it struggles. It loads slowly and while playing stuff on VLC it has lots of screen tearing and stuttering while it tries to load from the USB drive. So I need the most barebones stuff possible.