I created an opnsense chat room on Matrix for friendly, supportive discussion

[friendlyfirewall]

For those who are not familiar with Matrix, it's an open-source chat system similar to IRC, but much more advanced (for example, rooms can be end-to-end encrypted, there's support for editing/removing comments, some quoting/reply functionality, etc.)

The room address is #opnsense-users:matrix.org. It is not affiliated with Decisio, just to state the obvious.

You need a chat client (the most popular is Element which is available as an open source desktop program, web app, or smartphone app -  https://element.io ) and a "home server." You can use Matrix.org for your home server, or install your own (warning: this is pretty complex, though there is an ansible playbook that dramatically simplifies the process.)

TLDR instructions: sign up at https://app.element.io/#/welcome. Once you've created an account and are either using the desktop or web browser client, click on the compass toward the upper left, and enter "#opnsense-users:matrix.org". Note that Element has extensive control over notifications- you'll probably want to customize those pretty quickly.

Full disclosure: the reason for creating this room is because there's an existing but largely inactive room for OPNsense, run by one person who is incredibly toxic and hostile; it's not a welcoming room at all. After witnessing them endlessly chase off / chew out people for apparently unforgivable net etiquette violations, I asked if they would take some feedback regarding their moderation style....and was kicked from the room for doing so. On the plus side, I have their (sarcastic) encouragement to create a new room, so that's exactly what I've done

Since this is just getting started it's likely to be pretty quiet, but hopefully it can grow into a place for when more interactive/real-time communication would be useful. I look forward to meeting some of you, adding a moderation/admin team, etc.

Sorry for doing this under a brand new account - I think I used to have an account here. I tried to find my old account details but apparently never saved them in my password manager.

I have email turned on and I'm looking to see if I can get notifications for this thread, so feel free to ask questions if you're having trouble figuring out how to join - please post here first, and DM me if you don't get a response within a day or two.