Written 23 Aug 2026. This is a how-to, not a product card. Buy links are not tagged yet.

The first useful thing on the leftover box

Put a house-wide ad block on the leftover box. The rest of the house keeps using the internet as usual. You do not need a Raspberry Pi.

You already have a box that stays on. SSH from the couch works. The next job is one useful thing for the house, not a new gadget.

What this is

A program called Pi-hole. It answers name lookups for the house and skips the ones that are ads. Phones and laptops do not need an extra app. You point the house at this box once.

DNS is the phone book that turns names into numbers. When a laptop asks for a site, something has to look up the number. Pi-hole is one free program that sits in that phone book and skips ad names. Real sites still go through. A lot of ads never load.

You do not buy a Raspberry Pi. The leftover OptiPlex or old laptop is already a computer that stays on. Pi-hole is just software on it. The name sounds like a tiny board. Ignore that. You already did the hardware part.

Install it on the leftover box

This assumes Debian or Ubuntu Server, the OS from what OS to put on the leftover box, installed as in your first weekend. SSH in from the couch.

The house has to find this box later, so give it a static-ish address. A DHCP reservation is the easy way: tell the router to always give this box the same number. Use the address you found on the first weekend. If you skip this, the box might get a new number after a reboot, and the house will look in the wrong place.

The official path is one command from pi-hole.net. Walk through the prompts. Take the defaults. Use the URL on their site, not a copy from a forum. The basic install docs are the page to follow.

On the leftover box, run:

curl -sSL https://install.pi-hole.net | bash

If it asks for sudo, that is normal. Note the admin password it prints. You will need it in a minute.

Open the page it prints

The installer prints a web address. Open it on your normal computer. Usually http://pi.hole/admin, or the leftover box address plus /admin. You will see a dashboard. That is enough for tonight. Do not start hunting extra block lists.

Point the house at it

On the router, set DNS to the leftover box address. Every phone and laptop will start asking this box for names. The rest of the house keeps using the internet as usual. Sites still load. A lot of ads do not.

If the router will not let you change DNS, set DNS on one laptop first and confirm ads drop on that machine before you touch the whole house. That is a safer first test.

If something breaks, set DNS back to automatic, or back to your ISP. The internet still works without Pi-hole. You did not brick anything.

What next

Leave it a week. Then maybe a file share on this same box. Waiting is fine. Not Kubernetes. Not a new mini PC.

Skip

Skip buying a Raspberry Pi “because Pi-hole.” Skip Docker if you are not already using it. A bare install is fine on a dedicated leftover box. Skip Unbound on day one. Skip blocking so hard that banking sites die. Skip a second box for this.