So, for a single purpose kiosk device, I've had some success with not using a DE or WM at all - essentially putting the desired application inside your xinitrc. In that case, you would need to configure the window geometry using xdotool (I think). There's probably something similar for Wayland. Alternatively, a tiling wm like i3 or Sway could be useful if you remove all the keybinds from the config file.
ETA: for a device like that, I would say that arch is a potential starting point, but you might also consider an immutable distro. I don't have any experience with them though.
ETA2: For the hardware, a Raspberry Pi is not a bad starting point, but Arch on Arm isn't officially supported. Your mileage may vary
And even with that proviso, I've been using birdtray for ages, and it works well enough.
The homepage of their website also has a very 'holier-than-thou' feel to it, it's not horrifically bad, but something about how it's written makes me feel like I'm being preached to by a televangelist.
Yeah, it's overkill, and also breaks on anything newer than java 11 or 12
On windows 11, I believe you just can't set it up without internet. There's a couple of registry hacks you can do to bypass that though.