What is it with tar? I have the same issue.
Can confirm #6. Wife calls it dark screen and does indeed think I'm cool for using it.
I think you've got a setting wrong. I've got mine set to download only. So it just downloads the update in the background and notifies me. I have even left that notification sitting there for months before without it forcing or nagging me.
My purpose is fulfilled.
Like Gooey Louie?
I just recently got myself a Pi 4 8GB for €86 on Amazon, a barely used 10TB IronWolf NAS HDD for €120 on eBay, and an HDD enclosure for €20 that powers the HDD and plugs into the Pi via USB3. Currently it's running Plex Media Server, qBittorrent, Wireguard, AdGuard Home, Nextcloud, Caddy, and a few monitoring containers. It's handling all of that easily. I'm using it headless and just stream content to my TV. Currently I have no redundancy for my drive, but I'll get around to that eventually.
You can of course keep using PiHole for your setup. I recommend you check out !selfhosted@lemmy.world and r/selfhosted.
You don't even need to buy a microsd card anymore because they now ship with the firmware that can boot from USB.