Little Snitch on Linux
the.unknown-universe.co.uk
Why I’m skipping the new Little Snitch for Linux in favour of my existing, transparent AdGuard Home and OpenSnitch setup.

I saw the news about Little Snitch coming to Linux via eBPF and Rust. On paper, it looks fancy. In reality, the backend is closed source.

Personally, I don’t see the point in installing a proprietary black box to monitor other black boxes. I’m sticking with my AdGuard Home setup and OpenSnitch for when I actually need to trace a binary.

I wrote up my thoughts on why I think this is a solved problem for most FOSS-first home labs.

  • signofzeta@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    6·
    2 hours ago

    I’ve used Little Snitch on macOS, but I agree that a closed-source blob won’t fly on Linux. OpenSnitch exists, though I haven’t tried that one.

  • Obin@feddit.org
    16·
    4 hours ago

    Also, you only need that stuff to begin with if you don’t have control over the operating system and your browser (like on Apple or Microsoft). For me, using a Firefox-based browser with uBlock Origin on both phone and desktop is enough so I don’t have to ever see ads, and I just don’t install spyware in the first place.

    • Lemmchen@feddit.orgEnglish
      4·
      2 hours ago

      Little Snitch has nothing to do with ad blocking. I don’t know what you’re talking about.

      • Obin@feddit.org
        2·
        2 hours ago

        Little Snitch is literally used for blocking ads as well as other network traffic. My main point was that you don’t have to use it for blocking the other traffic, because Linux systems won’t have unwanted traffic to begin with, since you have full control over it. And for the ad part, there’s better solutions than network-level filtering if you have control over your browser.

        So is it more that you don’t know what I’m talking about or that you don’t want to, for whatever reason?

    • brownmustardminion@lemmy.ml
      13·
      3 hours ago

      Careful. Almost every Firefox based browser still pings out to various google domains and sends out other telemetry.

      Librewolf is fine though.

      • Obin@feddit.org
        4·
        3 hours ago

        Librewolf (with some overrides and a source patch) on the desktop and Fennec on Android. Before Librewolf I used upstream Firefox with the Arkenfox user.js, but Librewolf made that obsolete.

        I haven’t looked into Fennec’s current version in detail, mostly because I use the browser so rarely on my phone and my main consideration is not getting ads when I do, but they might still use SafeSearch and stuff like that, so if you’re aware of any better alternatives that are in F-Droid please tell me.

  • Brummbaer@pawb.social
    13·
    4 hours ago

    Nice, something running in an eBPF context with a blob in the middle, what could go wrong …

    Also there are already a lot of binary blobs in the kernel, that also makes me nervous a bit.

  • Señor Mono@feddit.org
    2·
    4 hours ago

    Well, if you think homelab there are plenty of other ways to realize a sink holes (pi hole, blocky, …).

    Little snitch and others are a good addition which can be useful, e.g. when roaming with a mobile device.