As to the original posters wondering why video playback is so erratic on Zorin that is because hardware acceleration for video on Linux is a mess.
You have multiple approaches that are not cross platform or cross vendor so some software supports this, that & the other, linux web browsers often have GPU video decode disabled by default.
The good news is that the Khronos Group behind OpenGL and Vulkan have developed a Vulkan Video Support specification and its now working in development branches of the open source Mesa GPU driver but only for one AMD GPU at this time. The downside is it will take some time for the above to bear fruit with software/drivers/distros all being linked up.
There isn't a whole lot the Zorin team can do about all of the above but partnering with a browser like Brave or Vivaldi for a ZorinOS edition were it has Intel's VA-API GPU video decode enabled out of the box would help. This though is a matter of money.
No issues here, i have a nvidia gtx 1070 and have 0 issues with hardware acceleration for video's on linux.
I use firefox, didn't change anything in it.
If you look at the gpu from the op it is an old low end gpu, it has nothing to do with mesa gpu driver or vulkan. It's because his gpu is cr ap.
The Intel HD Graphics (Bay Trail) is a low-end integrated Bay Trail graphics card found in certain Atom models (Z3770), nettops (J2850) and notebook SoCs (N3510). It supports DirectX 11 and is based on the Ivy Bridge GPU. Clock rates and shader cores, however, are considerably lower.
People need to understand that Linux is not Windows, Windows gets from every developer awesome drivers while in Linux developers care less. There are some developers like Nvidia who finally deliver good gpu drivers or hp with their drivers for printers and so one. But drivers that don't get released needs to be build by hand by "someone".
If you buy a car lets say a volkswagen, you can't compare the specs with a lamborgini.
Actually if one stick to 5 years old Nvidia, a chance for having any problem is minimal. I can attest that since I have 2 GPUs from the same vintage in 2 desktops.
The wording in this could stand a clarification:
You meant to say that Independent hardware developers care less about Linux; not that Linux Developers Care less.