Thanks, yet, preaching to the flock…I am utterly convinced KDE is great. I saw it working on one of my other boxes (yep, I have several) and I loved it.
Turns out, my GPU is antique (heh, I do go retro, so…) and cannot handle KDE.
I am in the process of getting an AMD based card now…
But…yea, I like KDE. One has to tweak it. As an illustration: I have Debian on an old laptop (for school) and it runs without tweaking.
I never have really had to tweak until now, so I was confused… 
Your computer has PCI-E, so any PCI-E GPU should work. The only thing you have to take into account is the power supply.
Your actual Quadro FX1800 GPU is rated for <60W TDP, so it doesn’t need external power, it gets by with the power the PCI-E port supplies.
I think your current GPU works with nouveau (the free driver for nVidia), did you try that?
Yes, I did. In fact, it’s the driver I use now.
I have a feeling that the last update (when still on XFCE) automatically put the system on Nouveau. I was using the proprietary drivers until then. From then on, things went dark and I needed to reinstall. I choose KDE (after years of XFCE, I needed a change) and put it on Nouveau right away.
I noticed freeze-ups while using VLC. After some investigation, it came down to Nouveau and my old card.
The new one is passively cooled, the one I want to replace is actively cooled. I think I’ll use less power.
I have not noticed external power connections on the new card, so I hope we’re good to go.
Thanks for pointhing that out 
Melissa
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In VLC settings, set video output setting as OpenGL, not auto, not VDPAU, use OpenGL.
Or use SMPlayer as VLC is inferior in my opinion for purely just playing video.
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I agree. I posted another reply earlier under “KDE Freezes” and – for me, anyway – Baloo was the problem. Baloo seems to be the absolute worst offender when it comes to system hang.
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I have the same problem, but only for some videos.
Wow, thanks! That fixed my issue with the… audio. On my current laptop, all videos started with the stutter. Both picture and sound were fragmented for 1-2 seconds, then it all played fine. Forwarding movie also invoked the same bug once in a while. This OpenGL setting seems to be fixing all those issues.
I was trying to fix it for so long, checked various settings but not this one. There is simply too many settings so figuring out on my own is near to impossible. For the 5 years I’m using this laptop, I couldn’t figure this out. Now it’s fixed. Thank you!
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In my opinion, it is because VLC is kinda meh on Linux (it does too much, what we call here in France a ‘gas factory’, and is inferior to the Windows version), and ESPECIALLY with Nvidia. Seriously since I switched to SMPlayer, it is better experience, try for yourself, videos feel and look better in SMPlayer for me, VLC I don’t know, it is not AS GOOD.
For the story I had issues for many many months back in 2019 when I installed Manjaro, unexplainable system freeze or crash while playing videos in VLC, randomly, I tried so many thing to figure that out, I’m glad it helps people.
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This, except I use mpv. Apart from the fact that I was sick of that “construction cone”, worst icon in the history of sotware development imo 
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setting VLC video output to openGL seems to have fixed an issue i had with the sound stopping for a sec or two when pausing the video or moving forward/backward.
every where i looked the solution was to play with the sound option and changing them to ALSA etc.
i will check smp player.
Same here, I cannot count the times I had to kill a zombie VLC 
This thread has made me quite…disliking VLC. So I’ve just removed it in favour of smplayer.
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I don’t know where that claim came from, but I never said I always install Gnome.
Maybe you’re confusing with either I installed Gnome on my new gaming PC recently, or I install Gnome after installing KDE on some other PCs.
Yeah, that was exactly my issue either.
i saw your comment,that’s why i decided to try it.
So using OpenGL fixed all of your issues in VLC guys? Then remember that tip, and spread it like butter now.
I’ll still be confirming it,but from a quick check it seems like it.
To all the people that hope VLC will run with Open GL enabled. Tried that, it failed.
I disabled the quiet option at boot to see what fails at load…nothing fails.
I have tried both kernels 5.4 and 4.19 with the same results.
I suspect the Nouveau for this. That, in combination with my antique GPU
And what error in VLC? Starting it from terminal would probably output relevant infiormation. Also installing 340 DKMS driver provided by philm could be good for your old GPU (need kernel 5.4 - 5.10).
I would never run nouveau if nvidia driver works.
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