Due to the keyboard itself, it's pretty much impossible to get a tiling wm to behave easily, though there are few tricks. I'll write about those sometime in more detail, but for now, it is possible to get somewhat usable shortcuts using Fn+key combinations by disabling everything but the most essential ones, and using keys with symbols you don't need. It's also possible to modify keymap so you can move symbols to other keys or delete ones you don't need , "freeing" few buttons for wm. That's not very ideal though. There is also the idea of using camera button as modifier, not sure if it's (easily) possible though.

Currently, pretty much the only thing I tinker with N900 anymore is Awesome configuration aimed for touchscreen usage on devices without or limited hw keyboard. This in mind, I've been thinking of a kind of "command mode", which essentially would activate on one particular fn+key combination, from which you could just press a single key to perform the action wanted. If I ever have time to make any progress with the whole config, and get all of the ideas I have materialized, it'll be.. awesome

Try adding more details to setxkbmap in command line, so it essentially is the same as in configuration file. Do you, btw, have the modified xkeyboard-config package installed?

Here's udev rule for calibration:
https://github.com/archlinuxarm-n900...ibration.rules