The LinuxForums Pro Subscription is for committed Linux users who want to get more involved in the Linux Community and support these Forums. It doesn’t mean you need to be an expert, anyone who wants to get involved and learn and/or contribute is welcome.
What’s on Offer
- Use the Forums ad free, ads are not displayed to members of the Pro group
- Gain access to private Forum categories
- A LinuxForums.org.uk EMail address, emails delivered directly to your current inbox
- A Linuxforums.org.uk Matrix account which includes access to;
- real-time group chat
- real-time direct messaging
- audio and video conferencing
- web based desktop application
- mobile matrix application
If you subscribe you don’t have to use all these features, for example you may just want to support the forms and like not seeing any ads. You may on the other hand like to experiment with all of these features over time …
What’s the cost
- Annual subscription for £13 per year
- Monthly subscription for £1.30 per month
Why the discrepancy? Simple, credit card fees … anyone who would like to pay monthly by bank transfer, standing order or scheduled Monzo payment (or anything with no fees) £1 per month.
Actions
On subscribing, you will automatically be joined to the Pro group and be subscribed to the Pro Support category. As soon as you are a member of the Pro group, you should cease to see external ads on the site. (you may on occasion see ads we post for things we are doing)
We will then contact you to set up an email address, once this is working you will be able to subscribe to our Matrix server. If you would like to pay via a bank transfer of via standing order, please contact @madpenguin
Subscribe (£1.30 Monthly) Subscribe (£13 Annually)
Subscriptions are handled automatically via the Forum’s subscription mechanism which uses Stripe to process card payments.
What are these things and how do they work?
This is a simple redirect, all email coming in to (your selected name)@linuxforums.org.uk is pointed to your pre-existing email service. This should work form most (all) pre-existing email providers including the big ones like Google. We’re using a service provided by CloudFlare to do the redirection so it doesn’t directly rely on our servers. In addition to the redirection CloudFlare provides a degree of Spam and Virus protection in addition to any you may receive from your current email provider.
Note that this allows you to receive emails for this address, it does not include sending. When you reply to an email sent to this address it would typically be “from” your normal email address. If you also wish to send emails it’s something we can talk about but is typically a more complex operation depending on your current provider.
The Matrix
The Matrix is a decentralized communications system not unlike (in terms of function) commercial products like Slack. The key differences are that it is decentralized (!) , Open Source, and allows for end-to-end encryption.
So what does decentralized mean? Essentially it means there is no central server, just a loosely federated collection of cooperating servers. In this case we run our own servers and we can either provide you with credentials issued by one of our severs, or we can help you set up your own server and created a federated connection between your server, our server(s) and others you may be interested in connecting to.
You can connect either via a desktop based application, or via the free element app for mobile phones. Typically these are reliable, secure and high quality applications.
Our Matrix servers now support both the Element and ElementX apps which are available from the Google Play store or Apple Store depending on your Phone.
For more information, please visit the main Forums page at https://linuxforums.org.uk