What I have is a Dell Vostro200 loaded with Ubuntu 14.04, all offered updates installed. What I want to do is watch html5 movies, which I cannot do now, although I can get Youtube films.

What must I do to get html5 on my machine?

Hi! From what I gather, html5 support should depend on your browser. Most major modern browsers, like Firefox, Chrome and Opera, support it. Moreover, the site on which you watch films has to offer videos in html5 format for you to be able to watch them. For Youtube, you can check if html5 is used here: https://www.youtube.com/html5

the hardware is 10 years old. that is very, very, old.
the hardware isn't up to it, not the software.
you can try to get a recent version of 'mpv' and 'youtube-dl', and watch net videos with that (not only youtube videos!).

Html5 should not be a problem. Your hardware ought to be fast enough, also, although HD resolution may be choppy.

More likely, you have a specific problem with particular web sites which require DRM. For example, Netflix requires a DRM capable web browser. This means a recent version of Firefox or Chrome. I think Ubuntu 14.04 does not have sufficiently recent versions of Firefox/Chrome.

Assuming you have an amd64 install (rather than a 32 bit install), then you could try to install the latest version of Google Chrome from here:

https://www.google.com/chrome/browse...top/index.html

Download the Ubuntu/Debian file (a .deb file). If it doesn't automatically know what to do with this, go to a terminal and type in the following commands:

Note that Google no longer provides 32 bit versions of Chrome, and never provided any 32 bit version of Chrome with DRM.

Video playback of Netflix on older computers is MUCH smoother and more efficient with Chrome than with Firefox. On your computer's CPU, this will definitely make a difference.

i was too quick.
yes, you should tell us about your browser, how youy installed it, at what version it is.

also 'uname -rv' and 'lspci -k' can't hurt.