BarbecueCowboy

Maybe not an eli5, but lots of reasons.

There’s no stable, consistently updating client that everyone agrees on, the real ‘emule’ client hasn’t been updated in over a decade. Once you get past that hurdle, the setup is also a lot more cumbersome than other file sharing options. The network also has kind of a bad reputation because there’s not a great way to see if you can trust a file until you’re finished downloading it and people definitely do take advantage of that.

A refurbished tiny/mini/micro PC will use more power in terms of sheer numbers, but the cost is still so small on them that it’s really not worth considering for most.

I mean, you’re in the right place then my friend, because you’re not going to subscribe to much of anything that has an international presence.

It kinda sucks when you’re in one of the ‘high price’ countries, but there’s lot of countries who wouldn’t have it at all if they had to pay our prices.

Seconding the request to share your work.

That is an amazing idea you’ve come up with that I never considered, but now I need it.

I can back this up with experience.

I’m actively running two piholes for years now. About 2/3rds of my traffic does go to the primary and some seem to ‘lock on’ to using just one, but most devices will swap between the two at their leisure.

People have tested them long term at this point. Outside of a few rare exceptions, there’s not a noticeable difference in reliability between shucked drives and ‘normal’ drives. They’re the same stock but just rebranded and have to be cheaper because they’re marketed primarily for retail as opposed to enthusiast/enterprise who are willing to pay more.

Source was included in OPs post, not sure of the reasoning behind putting it through the wayback machine, but to each their own. https://apnews.com/article/entertainment-elections-education-school-boards-teaching-059f2465829ab009394469b95c8cc94a There’s a few more links within the article with other details.

The spreadsheet linked in the post is a bit weird but also has a lot of other interesting supporting details.

Right there with you on the UI. This would overlap in functionality with a lot of other items in my network, but I’m trying to find a reason to use it just so I can play with the UI.