Start here with what kind of one you like to find some options

https://1lumen.com/flashlight-guide/

Which is your favorite and which do you use most?

I use Manjaro for nearly all of my pi’s, mostly because it is arch based and supports newer libraries.^___

I ended up doing a similar thing for the same reasons, too many things ignoring my local dns. I ended up creating a subdomain for my house where all the A records had internal ips. I gave out fixed leases to the things with names though instead of dynamic dns updates.