keet

I kinda think this about the Separatists in Star Wars…Dooku aside…

Roasted, placed in a freezer, and ready to be ground up later?
/s

If you don’t already have a raspberry pi, get a pi zero W and put dietpi on it. You configure the wireless settings via text file once you etch the SD card. You don’t need a monitor. Personally, I set it up, looked at what DHCP address it had, and told my router to reserve that address. You can ssh into it to install pihole on the headless installation.

I switched for two reasons. First, I don’t like how Microsoft is trying to attach everything to an online microsoft account. I prefer local control of my OS. I know there is a workaround for this, but it isn’t worth the effort.

Second, I am Cheap. My latest hardware is a decade out of date, and linux makes better use of the limited resources that I have.

I would suggest Mint. Considering the hardware, the XFCE version. Have you looked into any hardware upgrades for these machines? I’ve found that a simple ram or hdd–>ssd upgrade can be rather inexpensive these days.