Aha, thank you. Shouldn’t have riffed from memory on that one, I suppose!

But very much agreed: the Zero series has plenty of beef for a DNS server. Maybe when the 3 comes out I’ll add one as a backup for my 4 server.

Funny enough, the Pi Zero uses the CPU from the 3 and the Zero 2 uses the CPU from the 3+, so they’re both more powerful than a 2 anyway :)

Just be sure that the second server in the list is also a black hole. If you don’t, all black holed requests will fallback to the second DNS… which, if it doesn’t also black hole them, will wind up serving you ads and defeating the point!

Personally I find a single Pi is just fine for DNS. It only takes like 10 seconds to reboot. Less, if you use M.2 storage via a HAT or boot from USB! That’s pretty fine downtime. But if you’re afraid you’ll knock over the network and get yelled at by your family or housemates, best to use a backup :)

The real answer? Buy a phone older than the 15. You’ll never get on-device intelligence. My 13 Mini takes great pictures, performs perfectly, has great battery life as a non-gamer. And it should get at least 3 more years of iOS updates (maybe more? phone specs have really leveled off).

Anything newer, Apple and Google will start pushing intelligence on you simply because your phone can do it.

You could try GrapheneOS as well on a recent Pixel.