OK, I reinstalled. I ran earlier rkhunter tests and it gave a clean bill of health on the known rootkits, but suspected 2 rootkits without identifying them. It was qbout that time I usually do a clean install. All my data is backed up, so it’s just setting it up with my peculiar taste. In the meantime Gnome 45 hit, so that came with it’s own challenges for the extensions that are not compatible.
Yep, and that those steps did not help. It seems each time I changed to a new download folder in profile, it reverted to ~/Downloads. I know there was something serious affecting Firefox due to waiting dialogs each time I opened a tab or did anything. To test it, I installed Waterfox G6.0.1, and had the same issues except the timing out.
I will post this a a solution just t close it. Thanks for the tips.