Ubuntu MATE Community launched

Some months ago we asked if the Ubuntu MATE community was interested in expanding without using social networks. The answer was clear. Yes, you do. Then we asked if the community would fund the required infrastructure and hosting. And you did! Thank you to everyone who became a monthly sponsor or donated.

The Ubuntu MATE team decided to use Discourse to provide a community space. You can sign up for an account on the our server or you can sign in with your social profiles if you want to. Discourse has a responsive design so anyone can access the community from any device, no apps required.

The Ubuntu MATE community will act as forum, wiki and also replaces traditional mailing lists. When you sign up you’ll receive a message that explains how to get around Discourse and use its most common features. Our hope is that the new Ubuntu MATE community site will become the hub through which all Ubuntu MATE communication can flow.

The server

A new quad core server with 4GB of RAM, 800GB RAID-6 Disk and 6TB bandwidth has been deployed. It is running Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS and Docker is running in a container. Mandrill is integrated for email notifications and CloudFlare provide an edge caching CDN, application firewall and adds an additional layer of spam prevention. The site is only available via https using TLS 1.0 (or higher), has HSTS enabled and uses perfect forward secrecy (PFS). The webserver also has SPDY enabled and StatusCake is used to monitor the site availability and response times. At the time of writing the Ubuntu MATE community site gets an A+ rating from SSL Labs.

We hope you enjoy the new Ubuntu MATE community. See you on the other side!