this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2023
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I ordered a Raspberry Pi 5 so I have a Pi 3 that’s about to be redundant. I haven’t used Pi-Hole so I was thinking it’d be good for that but I’m curious if there’s any downsides for users. Are sites blocked if you dont whitelist them? That sort of thing.

Basically, I’m not worried about me having issues but I’m worried about a maintenance headache if friends and family can’t access things.

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[–] think1984@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

DNS blocking is heavily dependent on the blocklist(s) you use. It's entirely possible to block >95% of crapware, and break companies' ability to track you without compromising usability.

Having used both for a lot of years, I'd say look instead at AdGuard Home. It is also FOSS but supports more out of the box; including certificate management, the ability to use encrypted DNS both upstream and downstream without need for third party software (cloudflared), the ability to use adblock filter syntax (lists are 200k lines instead of 2 million lines, but actually block more), and so on. PiHole has some improvements pending in the next version, but it's not there yet in comparison, imho.

I'd also strongly suggest you check out Hagezi's DNS blocklists, as they're pretty much set and forget. They're intended to be used as your only block list, and do an excellent job (see testing in the Discussions on their GitHub). Use the Normal list if you don't want to deal with false positives occasionally, and the Pro++ list if you don't mind getting your hands dirty (whitelisting occasionally) and want to block every last scrap of annoyance and anti-privacy crapware on the web. Both will significantly improve your online experience.

[–] TurboLag@lemmings.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do you know the Hagezi lists compare to oisd.nl? The latter have also been great for me, with no false positive that I can remember.

[–] think1984@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Even Hagezi's most basic list blocks a lot more than OISD, and still no false positives. See a comparison (run over the top 10,000 websites) here.

[–] TurboLag@lemmings.world 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks! I'll try out the lists when I get the chance :)

[–] BolexForSoup@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just added Hagezi to my little snitch mini blocklists, had no idea that existed. Thank you!

[–] think1984@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago