With this machine in hand, could l possibly go about experimenting with the DNS ?

Did you just completely ignore the suggestion to look at self hosting communities? This is one of the most popular things ever for people to self host. There's plenty of info out there on this.

Yes, you absolutely can run your own DNS resolver on your own hardware, and many people do. It's a hell of a lot easier than running an email server. There are a whole bunch of different projects and tools to do so, with different feature sets.

I'd recommend starting with PiHole, which is an ad blocking service that runs as a DNS server you can self host. It supports running a reverse DNS service underneath it rather than passing any non-blocked requests out to a third party DNS server.

With this machine ?

Oh. My. Fucking. GOD. YES WITH THAT FUCKING MACHINE! The one you linked in the opening post. The one you've linked in almost every post you've made. That machine.

Five fucking seconds of Google. Five seconds. Could have gotten you that answer. "hardware requirements for PiHole"

The name should give it away, it was originally made to run on Raspberry Pi boards with less resources than what you have.

Just search it up and fucking try it already.

Congrats, I'm blocking your dumb ass. I don't particularly dislike teaching/helping, but this has reached multiple levels beyond the absurd.

How the hell did they ever join Lemmy?