I run Linux Mint Mate on a 10 year old laptop. Everything works fine, but watching YouTube makes my wireless USB dongle mouse stutter a LOT. Basically if CPU usage goes up, mouse goes to hell.
Are you telling me that for some reason it's not using any hardware acceleration available while watching YouTube? How do I fix it?
It's probably the 2.4GHz WiFi transmitter interfering with the 2.4GHz mouse transmitter. You probably notice it during YouTube because it's constantly downloading. Try a wired mouse.
Interesting theory. The wired mouse is trouble free, but I figured that's because of a better sampling rate and less overhead over all.
Maybe I'll try a bluetooth mouse or some other frequency, or the laptop on fired Ethernet to see if the theory pans out.
Easiest way is to use Chrome or a Chrome based browser since they bundle codecs with the browser. If you're using Firefox, need to make sure you have the codecs. I know nothing about Mint specifically though to know if they'd automatically install codecs or not.
You specifically don't want to use the bundled codecs since those would be CPU decode only.
I've worked in video delivery for quite a while.
If I were to write the law, decision-makers wilfully forcing software video decoding where hardware is available would be made to sit on these CPUs with their bare buttocks. If that sounds inhumane, then yes, this is the harm they're bringing upon their users, and maybe it's time to stop turning the other cheek.