Best solution to quick booting media player laptop

[Andy]

I have a Fujitsu Laptop and it is dog slow booting up Windows XP. So I am thinking to reformat the disk and install a simple/fast OS of a Linux flavor.

All I need it for now is to play music and video plus internet browsing. What OS do you recommend for fast boot up and minimal hassle? I plan to use Winamp to stream internet radio and also the web to play media streamed from web sites such as Grooveshark.com and YouTube.

Also, it would be good if it worked with video cameras and Skype.

[donecweb]

I would recommend that you download several of the distros Live CD's and use them to boot from to see if your computer works well with it. The boot times for the Live CD will be slower that once it is installed. I personally would recommend trying Mandriva spring 2009 Gnome or Mepis 8.0 which uses the KDE desktop environment. You should know that a lot of people have problems with Ubuntu and wireless connections. I have tried to use Ubuntu on several machines and if I got it working the update broke it.

[Andy]

Thanks for the suggestions.

[SensoVision]

If I would have to solve similar tasks and setup this PC to someone else, I would use Ubuntu(for myself I would use Debian).
Don correct that updates may break sometimes program which working, that's because system is highly modular and sometimes programs built with new libraries doesn't work with old ones(of course system breaks for other reasons too). I have to admit that also got such problem when blindly update everything what possible and update everything at once, later when I got feeling of how system works and what critical for it, I've manage to switch to testing version of distro and work in it without problem.
Boot speed would be awful with any Live distro I can think of, but installed version should work pretty fast, if it's very critical for you to have fast booting system you'll have to tweak it and disable everything you don't need(so it wouldn't take time loading during start) although I believe that it's wasting of time and it's worth to wait for booting.
Skype should work anywhere although I never tried it with cameras as doesn't have one. Winamp would run under Wine but not sure if it would be able to stream radio, for this purpose I currently use XMMS, previously it was Gxine.

Anyway there are so many Linux flavors because people who use them are different and something what like one person would hate other one, so as Don recommended just download some Live disks and try them out prior installation, with your broadband and prices for disks(you can burn on RW always) it would be painless task.

[Andy]

I and friends have had success with Ubuntu on laptops. It seems very friendly to us Windows lovers  

Now I have some USB pen drives so I may try it out with those since CD's are like ancient technology to me now. I just have some CD-Rs but I guess I can use them up with Linux. Sorry, the hot humid weather has killed my motivation to mess about with OS's but I have a need to get this laptop working well by Thursday to get some music playing in my bar!

Boot up time is not critical but this computer is taking many minutes to boot.

[SensoVision]

I and friends have had success with Ubuntu on laptops. It seems very friendly to us Windows lovers 

this is the reason I recommend it to other people as it seems to be very intuitive in use.

Boot up time is not critical but this computer is taking many minutes to boot.

This is problem with any LiveCD since all content on the disk is compressed and prior system may use any program, it have to be uncompressed into RAM. So you may check how to install Linux on pen drive like on hard disk and boot it from there, this way it should take about one minute even on slowest PCs.
Also problem with slow boot may be covered in hotplug which not work well on your machine or DHCP, or system trying to access mailserver in time when internet access isn't yet available(you need to change configuration of mailserver daemon or remove it to resolve this). You can get clue what's source of problem by watching logs to see what task takes so long.
BTW do you mind to post specs of this PC?(just wonder)

[Andy]

I mean the boot time of Windows takes too long. I still haven't tried Linux yet on this Laptop. Also, today it crashed while playing music with winamp so that motivates me to change the OS.

I have a party on Thursday where I will use this Laptop to play music like a Juke Box so I will test it out then 

[SensoVision]

hope that testing will be successful and you'll spend time with your friends and not tweaking your player
Regarding boot time I guess you'll be disappointed,  as Windows generally boot faster if compare it to non-tweaked Linux.

[Andy]

The main thing is that the OS doesn't waste our time. It just has to do it's job!

[SensoVision]

So how was your party, does Linux worked for you or failed?

The main thing is that the OS doesn't waste our time. It just has to do it's job!

I think you require impossible thing, someone's time should always be wasted to do any job. Same with OS, either we need to pay someone for setup it or do it's on our own and invest our time.

[Andy]

The party was great. Unfortunately my wifi signal was too weak. I think it was because there were people in a room between the bar and my Wireless router. When I tested it before people arrived it seemed to have a good signal strength.

We swapped the laptop for an iPhone connected to the audio system where my friend played guitar on the iphone! Also he had some music mp3's to play. So the problem is not to do with the OS, but the wireless connection.

As you know, the wireless data rate drops as the signal gets weaker so streaming of audio doesn't work.

Maybe I could buy a better wireless router, but the laptop still has to transmit back. So I'm not sure what to do. Hard-wiring a lan cable would be best but a bit tricky to route it.