I was in the same circumstances when I started. But then I asked around which helped me properly configure it.

working on my end

You can find plenty of versions on Demonoid https://www.dnoid.to/. I’ve used them on bare metal and on virtualization.

I just checked my DNS blocked list. Topaz software do download their models from their repositories, but I haven’t come across any issues. About safety, well, its upto your threat model.

Then, Proton it is

Mullvad or Proton

I started using it on a daily bases since I switched to Linux. The distro I use as daily driver and other large projects have their support team on IRC.

It is much much better than posting on forums. You get instant response.

The website you mentioned made me laugh cause it mentions some weird files I never come across.

aHR0cHM6Ly9jcy5yaW4ucnUvZm9ydW0vaW5kZXgucGhw

It’s not really a hassle to configure your i2p node. I2p network recently went through a DDOS attack. Even during that point of time I had no issue surfing/torrenting.