It's easy, once you figure out how
The reason it's less than straightforward is because of the legality, which means you're not going to find a wiki page that lays it all out step by step.
In any event, you don't have to be a coder or a hacker. You don't need to know python. With the plug in, you don't even need to know what python is. You just need to find the right file, download it, unzip, and put the right file in the right place. In the time it took you to read this entire thread, you could've googled alf apprentice and got it figured out.
As for computing time, on a 4 year old PC it takes a second or two to strip the drm and a minute or two to convert from ePub to mobi.
All this is theoretical, of course, as I never do this myself!