On maintenance: there is an included admin console from which you can whitelist or blacklist domains. The external adlists are updated automatically.
The only time I've been frustrated with my PiHole is when I forget it exists and try to use analytics tools (Logrocket, FB analytics) for work. Otherwise haven't noticed any adverse effects on my web experience.
Once you have the base OS ready to go, it will take you less than 30 minutes if you know how to muck with your DHCP/firewall settings in your router.
https://github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole/#one-step-automated-insta...
Install Pi-Hole, then edit your DHCP server to hand out the Pi-Hole as the DNS server.
After installing Pi-hole, install this. Choose Wireguard, not OpenVPN. port-forward the Wireguard UDP port to your VPN server. use the "pivpn" command to create client configs and the "qr" subcommand to scan the config into your phone.
Not sure what that page holds but you can find out all about Pi-hole here:
For Movies: https://github.com/Radarr/Radarr https://github.com/Jackett/Jackett
For Scientific Research: https://foldingathome.org https://boinc.bakerlab.org/
PS: I did create some project : https://github.com/vs4vijay/SwissArmyPi
Pi Hole is open source, so if someone did try to sneak in some malicious code, it would be seen.
[1]: https://pi-hole.net/
[2]: https://adguard.com/en/adguard-ios-pro/overview.html
Not only is it more robust, it acts as a DNS/HTTP server that blocks this kind of stuff on a whole network.
Updates are manual, too, so unless you intervene, there is no reason that a working system would suddenly become compromised, except if somebody had access to your network. But then you have a different issue...
Also github project explains https://github.com/pi-hole/pi-hole