For additional content, you can accomplish ad blocking in a number of ways. The ones that immediately spring to mind:
browser extension: most modern browsers have some extension framework available. I've been using ublock origin for a number of years with reasonable results
VPN: some VPNs include ad blocking as a side benefit to their primary function. Nord doesn't seem to block ads on all mobile apps or is at least inconsistent in my experience
Network packet filter/PiHole: this has been on my to-do list for a while. Catches network traffic that looks like ads before it even reaches your device. Most involved and least portable
The only option (other than mitm-ing yourself and stripping ads from the html maybe) for blocking first party ads or spoofed first party ads is ublock origin on firefox
dns filtering can only block domains, ublock does full cosmetic filtering.
Ive been using DNS filtering for years and many sites actually collapse the advert space when it’s not used, and while a plug-in certainly can improve the UI, the DNS blocking also disables the resulting tracking, the network requests still happen with the plugins.
Additionally DNS filtering happens outside of a browser as well, so will block ads in literally every app as well, when setup correctly it’s also device independent.
When I still ran my own PiHole, there where days where as much as 60% of the traffic was adverts and trackers.
DNS filtering also extends to blocking things like malware and spam domains
A Pi-hole is easy to set up if you already have a Raspberry Pi and a router that supports changing the DNS (I had one that was rented from an ISP that didn't).
It is. And even if you wanted to localize it to specific devices, there's also a standalone version. I'm using it on my laptop with Arch and it's pretty good. Adblocking on the go, or if you don't want (or can't) mess with the router for some reason.
It was originally developed to run on a raspberry pi so most installers are Linux based. There is no installer for windows but you could run pinole on Docker Desktop in a VM.
If you’re running it using Docker, that’s a container not a VM. And that IS the way you would want to run it, in a container. They’re easy to set up, easy to use, and easy to maintain.
I meant you could run pihole as a container in docker on a windows VM if you really wanted to. Personally I run it on a docker instance and also on a dedicated LinuxVM on a seperate host for redundancy, but that's probably overkill.
Yeah but Docker Desktop uses a VM, either in WSL2 or Hyper-V. Docker Engine on Linux doesn't use a VM and that's what's typically used for hosting services.
Docker is a container platform. Docker Engine is the container host for Linux and Docker Desktop uses a virtual machine to run Docker Engine and containers in that VM.
For example, if you use Docker Desktop on Windows, Docker Desktop will run Docker Engine in a WSL2-based VM and then run containers inside that.
First, stop talking to me like I don’t know this already. Second, these facts don’t make me wrong or you right. The implication of what was said is that you run VM’s on docker. The fact is, you don’t. Stop arguing.
can you run pihole in VM? it would be practical for these weirdos that already use VM as a daily driver
Ok, so what I was trying to say was this...
Dude does most of their work out of a VM rather than the host, and asks if they can also run pihole in that VM. I was trying to say "yeah, but it's a Linux app so either run docker from within the VM itself and run it as a container or spin up another separate VM"
But I agree. Not argument-worthy. There's no grounds for ackchyually-ing here.