• did a dirty "reinstall from internet" of big sur which appears to have solved the problem, so far at least...

    why not Chrome?

  • Because you said opening Chrome makes your computer freeze up completely.

  • Chrome is known for it's poor performance. It uses up far more memory and cpu than most other browsers, so if you usually browse with several tabs going and on heavy sites, ie newspapers, it's quite likely that your computer grinds to a hault due to Chrome being poorly built

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