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Is pihole any different from just having a fatass hosts file?

• tra3 7y ago
  That's basically what it is. Advantages: - the list is community generated - you can disable it temporarily - there's a nice UI - you can protect all devices on your network Disadvantages: - gotta run it somehow (appliance, container, etc). Another thing to manage. Overall it's been a net positive. The amount of filtering that happens on my home network is staggering.
• hart_russell 7y ago
  Yes and no: Yes that's it's mechanism essentially. No in that it provides a nice user interface for automatically updating your blocklist, specifying which DNS to point to and how to encrypt your queries, you can temporarily disable the blocking (which you sometimes need to do), etc etc
• jrace 7y ago
  Essentially...yes. But it allows you to point all devices in your network to one "fatass hosts file" instead of maintaining them on each device. You do not need a raspberry pi to run pihole, it can be on a VM also.