Little Snitch’s software counter surveillance jumps from Mac to Linux

The popular macOS app Little Snitch brought its network-monitoring tools over to Linux this week. In a blog post announcing the launch, one of the developers at Objective Development shared some early results from using the app on Linux: “On Ubuntu, I found 9 system processes making internet connections over the course of one week. On macOS, we counted more than 100.”

While the Linux version of Little Snitch provides the same basic functionality for viewing and disabling unwanted connections, it’s not exactly the same. Objective Development says it’s “not a security tool,” unlike the macOS version.

According to Objective Development, Linux doesn’t automatically make apps more private — for instance, they found Firefox, which is pre-installed on Ubuntu, connecting to many different servers. The developers noted that Firefox “still connects to some of these servers,” even after ads and tracking were disabled in the browser’s preferences. They added:

“Each app behaves more or less the same way on all supported platforms. If you install Thunderbird, Visual Studio Code or any other major player, expect the same kind of metrics you see on other platforms. I found one notable exception, though: LibreOffice. I started LibreOffice Writer just for testing, and it made no network connections at all! Quite unusual these days!”

The Linux version of Little Snitch is available now for free and currently supports Linux distributions using kernel 6.12 or newer.