I understand what you're saying,
but here's the problem:

I've only been using Linux for about a month now,
and am unfamiliar with what the applications are.

Does that HTOP system monitor list [all] things which have access to your computer?
I'm specifically looking for spyware/malware;
can't that be hidden and embeded in the code?
How would I find that without installing a virus scan, as I've heard countless times they can damage a linux system?

If I ignore all the "Brave" extensions,
there seems to be maybe less than 30 process names,
but again, malware/spyware is supposed to be hidden in codes.

-Seriously appreciate the help

It's actually the "Pro 2"

8 GB RAM
120 GB M.2 SATA SSD
Intel 8260AC 802.11AC + BT 4.2

Though that is far from powerful,
the start up/load speeds with Linux run circles around a PC with double those specs.

While using "HTOP"'s System monitor, it shows I have about 30 process names running,
though with looking at just HTOP in the terminal, it looks like there are literally thousands.
Malware/spyware are said to often be embedded in the code--how would I look for that without installing an anti virus,
as those have been said to be damaging to a Linux system?

-Much appreciation and kind regards

a lot of this seems to circle back around to your unfamiliarity with a new system. why do you think you have a virus and how do you think you will be able to spot it without an antivirus if you don't know what you are looking at?

one way to start becoming familiar with some of the programs and processes that you can see running is to use the commands whatis and which. most processes that list /usr/bin or /usr/sbin in their commands can be explored with whatis. my system lists /usr/bin/irqbalance and whatis irqbalance says: "irqbalance (1)- distribute hardware interrupts across processors on a ...", but i believe it would take some time to go through all of them and even then you still probably wouldn't have a firm grasp of what is going on.

it seems like it might be more helpful if you could focus on the performance issues you are having trouble with. in your initial post you only say it froze once and slowed down another time.

trying to help figure out what is going wrong will probably be easier if you know how much memory and cpu % your system uses on average when things are going well and comparing that to similar numbers when things aren't working as you would prefer.

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What applications are you running when the system starts to lag?

I have never heard that anti virus is damaging.

I have similar systems

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It's only happened twice;
one time it completely froze after slowing down signigicantly for 3-5 minutes,
and the other time, it just was at like 10% speed for maybe 5 minutes.

I've only installed about 10 [trusted] programs since beginning,
about 3/4 hard drive space remaining,
and as I remember,
only Brave [maybe 15 tabs open], Calibre, and I think Spotify were running.

When I start, only the standard Mint programs start automatically to the best of my knowledge,
but again, I'm unfamiliar with what the System monitor says because I'm new to it,
and there are 25+- things listed [most of them seem normal to me at least]

To your anti-virus comment:
I've seen it allllll over that anti-virus corrupts the system,
and linux doesn't need one 80% of the time;
verified blogs, high-view vids, etc.
I'm here to learn,
but don't want to install it if I can find the problem another way,
though it might have just lagged, though that seems odd based on nothing making it do so.

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Just about any badly written program can cause memory leaks/corruption. True, there was a vulnerability with Norton antivirus a few years ago but that as far as I know has been patched. There is lots of old information on the internet and to say in general that something is bad without context does not help your situation.

Just because your system lags does not mean you have a virus.

A quick search showed many had problems with Spotify using excess memory and possibly due to hardware acceleration being enabled, turning it off may help the problem.

I have not played with Brave. In general the more tabs the more memory is used. You may not be able to open 15 at a time. Do you have any extensions installed?

System monitoring software exists for all OSs, you should be familiar with the concept.
Doesn't have to be (h)top, GUI alternatives exist.

BTW, I cannot recommend the Brave Browser: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_(web_browser) (there's a few bombs in that article)

No bombs;
that autofill for ads doesn't affect me as I don't use it,
and it's still infinitely faster and more private than any other browser.
Quite a few videos showing that,
though I'm a little wary that it's based on Chrome;
it's seemingly next to impossible to escape Google,
but they seem like they're closest.

HTOP seems pretty solid;
do you have any other recommendations?

-Regards

If I'm not mistaken, 'Brave' is an option from an advertising company, and is also based on Chromium which itself has a reputation for being a resource hog - not much to recommend its use in any real context that I can see. Chromium should be available for basically any distro, and Firefox is pretty commonly installed in most distros these days - both are good choices, and can be made excellent with some tweaks (I'd preference Firefox in this regard). Also note that '15 tabs open' may be very little workload, or very heavy workload, depending on how much 'stuff' each one is doing (in other words, 15 tabs of LinuxQuestions.org is probably not so much, 15 Netflix 4K streams is another story...). It really sounds like you're trying to use a low-end/hobbyist SBC as a standard desktop - that's generally not going to yield a very good user experience if you also expect instantaneous response from every running program, at all times. Have you ever gotten a look at operating temperatures or CPU % during these 'slowdowns'?

At this point here's what I would suggest: since you are insistent the machine is compromised in some way, IT 101 would be to DBAN and re-install a clean OS from clean/verified install media, and go on from there (zero point in trying to use a compromised machine further - eliminate the immediate threat). Ideally you're only installing software from the package manager, which should eliminate a lot of the 'but I don't know what I'm getting' - this isn't Windows, 'I need an application for...' does not translate to 'randomly type some stuff into the Google machine, click the first 20 links, download everything, hit go' - it should start and end with the package manager (on Mint that is APT). Once you get a clean, new install, don't just run out and load it up with a bunch of apps and services all at once - selectively add one thing back at a time and you should find the pain point for performance (in other words 'hey so I got Calibre and a browser working, but the second I loaded Spotify [or whatever] it started getting sluggy' - hopefully its obvious like that). Finally, anti-virus for Linux does exist, and if its corrupting systems that's news to me (and probably a lot of other people too) - ClamAV is what you're looking for (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clam_AntiVirus). There is a GUI front-end available, called ClamTk. I will not be surprised if this runs comparatively bad (during scans) on the SBC - ClamAV is pretty single-core/single-thread performance dependant.

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The odds of this being malware are exceptionally low. As mentioned above, the best recourse (for malware) is to wipe the system and start anew. But, the odds of it being malware are so very, very low, that you can discount that idea as not really plausible.

It could be most anything, as you've given us no helpful information. You could try checking the system logs. Keep running as normal, but install KSystemlog and check it the next time you have slowdowns like that. It can be downloaded here (just use the Ubuntu version that matches your Mint version).

Finally, if you're going to use a Chromium-based browser, you might just as well use Chromium. Vivaldi also doesn't do the things Brave does, and it looks good out of the box - as well as being fairly similar to Brave.

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