Youtube videos are slow?
The problem may be that YouTube is using Flash, which is notorious for being slow on Linux. Try going here and clicking the link to participate in the YouTube HTML5 beta. The player isn't as nice, but it should perform better.
I had a similar problem, as you said it has persisted across multiple browsers, and speed checks out. I am assuming Ubuntu is your OS.
1.Try deleting your 'libflashplayer.so' plugins and re-download from adobe. Unpack and move back to plugin directory of your browser.
2.Try clearing (in chromium) your history. Also go to tools in control menu, and clear browsing data. Might be a weird caching problem.
Did you add any extensions? Do other video sites, or flash games work? As a last resort un-install chromium, and remove completely in Synaptic, and all old config files, and reinstall.
Might need a system update, if you haven't tried already. Also reboot system.
Good luck!
In my case I determined that it was actually the audio that was not working properly. That was causing the video to hang. Performing the following fixed my issue:
- Make sure pulse audio is installed
rm -r ~/.config/pulse; pulseaudio -k
Reference: No sound device detected