If you've been using Linux or reading Slashdot for more than a few months, we don't need to tell you about Alan Cox. (If you are new to Linux and/or Slashdot you can learn more about him here.) Anyway, this is your chance to ask Alan anything you want. Post your question(s) below. Moderators will choose the most interesting ones. Answers will appear Friday. Please try to ask only one question per post. Thanks.

madHomer writes "There is a good article in the SJ Mercury-News that talks about Linus' life here in the US. It even includes a blurb from his father about raising him. " Interesting coverage, although once again, I think we get closer to the hero-worship complex that seems to clash with others ideals of the 'the movement'. In any case, however, an interesting read.

tilly writes "The recent article, An Open Business Plan for Red Hat, Inc. (which appeared on /. as What if Red Hat Bought SCO) has inspired an interesting follow-up article on Freshmeat. "

Rares Marian sent us linkage to an article running over at LinuxToday. Apparently someone else has tried to trademark Linux. This time its in Korea. Now there is no way that this can hold up, so I find this amusing, but it does actually have to be addressed. Very frusterating. It bothers me that there are so many people who are willing to pull this sort of stuff.

Another Not So Anonymous Coward is pulling hair out over this issue: "I think this may not be the most appropriate forum for this, but I am at my wits end. I have been asking around and presenting this to the top minds I know, and it baffles all of them. So far, not a single person has been able to explain this, even on the Linux newsgroups. I am setting up PPP. And I have a problem. I am not a complete fool, so I know how to set up PPP correctly (Linux RH6.0, if you were wondering). Everything works perfectly, it connects, it pings it traces routes as far as the eye can see. But, if you ask for a http request, pppd gets a brain fart and starts acting like a mad man. I added the argument "record /tmp/ppp.log" to pppd to see what was happening, and I found the answer. Whenever I make a connection, pppd recieves the first 3-4000 characters of the page, I can see it in the log. I ususally get about 1/2 a page, BUT then it coughs. It waits a couple of seconds, and then STARTS OVER. It recieves again the first 3000 characters and hiccups again. So, I can use the web if I want to look at pages with less than 4000 characters, but anything more than that and it just hangs forever calling up the heads of web-pages. Does anybody have a clue as to why this is happening? (I know there is no porblems on the remote side becuase when I use windows 98, everything works peachy. It has to be my shiny new Linux box... grrrr!) " This sounds really odd. I admit that I'm stumped. Do any of you kind folks have any clues?

treilly asks: "In the coming weeks, the startup company I work for will be rolling out a couple of Linux boxes as production webservers running Apache and MySQL. Management was quick to realize the benefits of Linux, but I was recently asked: "Now that we're rolling out these servers, how do we optimize out of the box RedHat 6.0 machines as high performance web and database servers in a hosting environment"?

An Anonymous Coward wrote in with this question: "I have a Linux server with 15 Windows clients. It's currently connected to the net with IP-Masqurading. Right now we have the Windows machines directly connect to the ISP to get their mail. I want to have them connect to the Linux server and then use fetchmail on the server. Each computer has it's own email account, someguy@somedomain.com I'd like to be able to have fetchmail grab all of the mail for all of the accounts and then use something like qmail to allow the Windows machines to get their mail. Whats a good way to do this? Note that I *must* be able to have email accounts with long names, about 15 characters. And I'd like it to be able to automatically add any new accounts. "

Dean Povey writes "LinuxJournal has a great article on the plethora of bogus software patents and their possible effects on the Open Source community." This isn't "new" news (it was published Aug. 10), and a lot has aleady been written on the subject, but this is one of the most thoughtful articles I've seen about software patents, and their effects on Linux and free software development in general.

DrunkenBastard writes "I just noticed that a 2.2.12 kernel was starting to appear on the kernel.org mirror I usually frequent. " When I saw this submission, the first thing I thought was "And me with my 38 day uptime". That confirms it. I gotta go out ;)

An anonymous reader wrote in to send us linkage to a news.com story that says a "Key" linux site may be sold. Its actually talking about linux.org, but it also mentions Linux.com, Andover/Slashdot/Freshmeat, and contains assorted comments from Michael McLagen. Doesn't say who interested, but he does say it is "publicly traded company that buys web sites" so Earthweb and Internet.com are both reasonable guesses.

According to an Article in InfoWorld, HP will release next week a new family of thin client PCs. Out of the 3 models that they will release, 2 of them will be with an embedded Linux core (the L & X models, and the G model with MS Windows CE) and they'll include Netscape Navigator for browser-based access to Java programs as well as access to Windows applications. The X series also includes HP's ChaiVM embedded Java virtual machine, providing access to applications hosted on Unix and legacy servers.

cyan writes "It appears that Slackware is finally going to be glibc based. This was revealed today via an announcement which was sent to the slackware-announce mailing list. A directory called "slackware-current has appeared on cdrom.com, so people may take a look at what's in store if they wish. Note that this should in no way be considered "stable", it's more for testing purposes. Check out the ChangeLog.txt for details; looks promising for all us Slackware freaks ;) " It seems the Slackware folks have been quite busy recently...

wesmills writes "ZDNet, that fine purvayor of well-balanced, highly informative Linux stories (BS mode OFF) has written a piece complaining that Linus isn't as accessible as he used to be. You wouldn't answer the phone, either, if you had 1000s of journalists asking the same question all day, every day, would you? " I'm in an odd position: As a pseudo journalist I sometimes need to get ahold of people in that capacity, but I also have to deal regularly with media types who just want a lame quote for their article. After you answer the same questions time and time again, it gets amazingly tedious (And I've been known to tell reporters to read the FAQ too ;) I'm amazed Linus lasted this long. I hope that the levels of protection he's put in place give him some well deserved privacy.

Thexder wrote to us with a curious piece on what RH should do with all it's new found wealth: buy SCO. It's a crazy idea, and gives me a headache when I try to analyze it, but the author does have some interesting points.

Anonymous Coward muttered this question in my ear: "Has anyone thought about approaching Digital to release FX!32 under an open source style license, so that people running Linux/Alpha can take x86 binaries and run them, the same as they can for Windows NT Alpha? What about making the FX!32 backend work on the other non x86 PCs, Sparc, PPC, ARM, etc? Is there a team working on a kernel module to do this? I think it could fall under the Binary format option. I think this would make Linux/some other CPU more attractive then Linux/x86. I use Linux x86 myself, but would like to use an Alpha or PowerPC, however apps like Real Player, Codewarrior, Word Perfect, Star Office, some of which I use, as far as I know, only exist for x86. "

Linus has blessed what could very well be the last kernel in the 2.0 series, 2.0.38. The small patch fixes a dangerous TCP/IP bug, and two other small bugs. Please use a local mirror (ftp.us.kernel.org for us folks in the US). Update: 08/26 07:25 by J : It seems that 2.2.12 and 2.3.15 have also been blessed by the holy penguin pee :)

SheldonYoung writes "Brad LaRonde and friends have Linux up and running on NEC MIPS Vr41xx palm-sized machines, such as the Casio E-100 and Vandem Clio. Those interested can grab the source and documentation from his Linux-MIPS Pages. "

Matt Welsh has written in to talk a bit about the future of a project that he is very familiar with. The LDP ^[?] has been essential to help newbies (and even experts) learn what they need on their quest to become gurus. Hit the link below to read what Matt has to say about where the project ought to head.

Stone writes "It's seems that Red Hat get a big competitor with Mandrake. Axa announces today an equity position in Mandrakesoft. Axa is the second world leader of assets management with 650 billion USD and the owner of DLJ who makes a lot's of Nasdaq IPOs." Thus it begins.

Phexro writes "Looks like Nick Petreley, IDG and the LinuxWorld gang have a neat idea- Open Books. They are soliciting the Linux community to help write "The Essential Linux", which will be written and edited completely(?) by the members of the Linux community. The finished work will be distributed under the terms of the IDG Books Open Content License." I'll probably volunteer; I'm already in the Open Source Writers Group. But will enough others participate to make it a viable project? (More below)