Introducing: The Month of Linux Answers

Have a Linux question? Then read on!

Have a doubt or question about Linux? Perhaps an application feature you'd like explained? I'm going to tap into 9 years of Linux expertise to answer your questions as well as I can.

I'm doing this because I want to spread Linux. Of course, traffic to this Web site won't hurt, either :-). Here are the guidelines:

Ask me about Linux: the guidelines

Effective immediately, I'm accepting questions about Linux in the comments section of this post. And by Linux, I don't mean "the Linux kernel" -- I mean "all the software in any reasonably featured distro". If you have a question about OpenOffice.org, KDE, GNOME, SAMBA, or any application that is reasonably expected to appear in a modern, complete distro, I'll accept it gladly.

Starting May 1st. 2007, and daily through May 31st, I will:

1. sift through the questions,
2. pick the best I can comprehensively answer,
3. answer the question in clear, concise language, explaining concepts required to understand the answer, and
4. post the answer on this blog (specifically, the Month of Linux answers section), no later than 9:00 AM the next day, with a hyperlinked mention of the question's author

Good question, bad question

Good questions get dibs. So, if you want your question to jump ahead of the queue, it should:

• Be original. Do not ask me the command line arguments for the ls command. Do, however, ask me how to combine arguments and commands in pipes.
• Be a question whose answer may benefit a large portion of the Linux audience. Think practical benefit. To the effect, task-oriented questions are good. The answer to How do I extract the last 10 lines containing the word Oregon from a text file? is particularly useful for readers. Why?-type questions are fair game, too.

Conversely, bad questions get ignored. These types of questions aren't so good:

• Questions about distribution-specific behavior. I don't have a computing farm, only one Fedora 6 workstation.
• Questions that are too technical and detailed. The Month of Linux Questions should be a reference for a broad audience, not just compiler writers for custom NASA spacecraft processors that run Linux.
• Trick questions. I'm not dumb, and the audience isn't either.

Spread the word

The more people that know about this initiative, the more questions I'll get. The more questions I get, the higher the quality of the selected questions. The more visibility this project has, the more everyone benefits.

So spread the word! Check the answers I've already written up -- and don't forget to leave your question at the front door.