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.
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 provider fucks you over? NP, just point your redirecting 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 (edit: according to the screenshot above, not very), if you want to use this seriously.
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 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.
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.
Lol at that price tag. A .com domain is ~10$ a year and mail routing is free with many providers. So if I'd see that on a CV I would have a laugh and know the candidate has weird priorities for their money.
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