Yeah that’s right. For a whopping one time purchase of 250$, you get a lifetime license for a @linux.com domain as an email alias/forwarding only. You cannot send emails from this. You can contact support to check if the alias you want is available too.
Imagine this on your CV. It is the ultimate flex.
The biggest thing to remember here is that sending FROM your linux.com vanity address probably won’t work well. Yes, you absolutely can set your “mail from:” address to anything you want, but without corresponding SPF or DKIM records in the linux.com DNS server (which you can’t control and they won’t do), most major email providers will either send your messages to spam or outright reject them.
I know a guy that has a @linux.com email address. And yes putting that email address on his CV and Linkedin has resulted in him getting emails daily from companies asking if he’d be interested in a position or interview. He’s even had people just straight up offer him a job because of it.
Note though he’s a web developer and pretty much all the jobs offered or interviews etc are for positions out of his skillset i.e. system admin, server manager, IT, data analyst, etc. because they all see the linux part and figure he can run a server or something.
I was thinking of bill.gates@linux.com but considering the current epstinian events, maybe not.
imagine making a steve.balmer@linux.com email account, considering how much he LOVES Linux and absolutely does not consider it cancer.
Properly set up, it’s more than a vanity project - it’s an eternal email address.
Because, properly set up, you can also send mail from that address (or at least that’s how it appears to recipients).Another email provided fucks you over? NP, just point your ...@linux.com address somewhere else.
As someone who’s been using a similar service for over a decade, the end user and both providers need to set the thing up properly. Thankfully mine is dedicated.
So, you should check with linux.com (?) how serious they are about it, if you want to use this seriously.
I do this with @duck.com except it’s free and supports generating alias addresses that can be disabled.
+1 for @duck.com
Also very entertaining to see people react when you give them the email domain.
Because, properly set up, you can also send mail from that address (or at least that’s how it appears to recipients).
How would you go about doing this? Getting the @linux.com domain to forward incoming email from a specific address somehow?
The from field in an email is something that the sender sets, and they don’t have to set it to anything in particular. Unless your email client stops you (which is pretty common these days) you can just enter a made up address, another address that you’d rather receive replies through, or someone else’s address. It’s one of the reasons why phishing emails work - there’s nothing stopping a scammer impersonating anyone they want to.
Interesting, I had no idea!
Thank you!
The “From” part is configurable per specification, it’s called identities. Good email clients will have config options for that.
But there’s an extra part that the server needs to provide so that Google doesn’t think you’re doing something “nefarious” (read: using email as it’s intended to be used and not as Google wants it to be used).
Gmail is one of the most, if not the most, annoying recipients to avoid the spam category. My ISP lists their non-business IPs on Spamhaus PBL because they’ve monetised having a static IP and decided email servers aren’t for residents. But I’ve snoozed – they haven’t been the highest rated ISP for years and the new highest is perfect.
Interesting, I had no idea!
Thank you!
Hmm… i briefly wrote a column (it was … pretty bad) for Linux.com when it was an online magazine in like 1998, i think. I wonder if the address they gave me still works.
Probably not. Heh.
I got one in like 2009 or so as a student at university. It literally paid for itself, because it also let me get a discount on a new laptop that was bigger than the price I paid the Linux Foundation.
I can confirm that my linux.com e-mail is still active, and I’ve changed where it forwards over the years.
Just make sure that wherever you’re forwarding it, you can reply from that same address. GMail has been fine for this, but when I switched to a different provider that didn’t support this, conversations started getting awkward.
because it also let me get a discount
wait how? would love to hear the story around this lol
Not much of a story to tell, honestly. I still have some e-mail receipts from around that time, but here’s a Reddit post about the idea: https://redd.it/2ehu1r
Lol at that price tag. A .com domain is ~10$ a year and mail routing is free with many providers. This is stupid af.
Well it’s more of a perk for a donation the way I see it,
But hey, it also breaks even after 25 years…!
Depends how you view priorities. $10/y or one time $250. I’ve owned several domains for longer than 25 years. $250 is a pretty sweet deal.
