@mr-lucas: Is that an exact quote from the help desk? I mean, it doesn't make sense as a reply for any question about the Mini and Kobo's support for it. Are you paraphrasing? Or was there something else stated? Whatever it was, the conclusion you have drawn from it in incorrect.
Kobo still supplies some support for the Mini through the Kobo desktop application. This was stated in the email they sent out when they announced the were stopping support for some of the other devices. The details are also on their support site at
https://help.kobo.com/hc/en-us/artic...mmon-questions. It is also something that has been discussed on this forum many times since that announcement. The suggestions for doing the setup are either to use the desktop application, or install the firmware manually. I can't remember if you will be able to sign into the device using WiFi after that or not.
And for the record, whenever new firmware is released, there is a thread here to discuss it. One of the fairly early questions in the thread is whether the firmware will work on the Mini. So far, the answer has always been yes. Kobo might not officially support the Mini with current firmware, but, they haven't actually removed the support from the code.