My friend has a VPN and runs them on his desktop Mac. He’s considering running on an old laptop or some other dedicated device

• VPN is a must.
• qbittorrent bound to the VPNs virtual network device.
• Prowlarr is enough to get started. Add some public trackers.

Then, Sonarr and Radarr for show and movie automation. Once you’re hooked, you’ll figure out the rest.