I've tried e17 as well with the mobile UI (in Easy Debian, and an accordingly sized VBox window on my PC) and to me it seems to be the only UI Debian offers that might be suitable for a 3.5" touchscreen without using a stylus. I was able to make some progress with LXDE but I can only either create a UI that works without a stylus or that leaves enough room for application windows, not both at the same time. Xfce was even worse. btw. do you know the "bodhi-close" gadget created by Jeff Hoogland [1]? It essentially creates an [X] icon in the shelf (upper panel). I've found the source code here [2], but didn't compile it myself. In the VM I was able to use the Bodhi package in Debian. In combination with a taskbar-like gadget like iTask [3] (not an official part of E17) the "illume-softkey" module (lower panel) becomes totally dispensable, which in turn frees up some precious pixels for applications. Here's a screenshot of Bodhi running in a 800x480px VM with an E17 setup that I think might work well on the N900 screen [4]. It turned out whenever I tried to put something together in Debian that might work it ended up looking like Bodhi. So @Jeff, in case you read this: Thank you! What's your preferred web browser in Debian on the N900? I believe iceweasel is too heavy and it seems some potential alternatives (midori, xxxterm) aren't actually maintained. So far I'm leaning towards qupzilla and netsurf.
Thanks for the reminder! As a very simple "solution", wouldn't it be sufficient to mute ALSA's lower-frequency equalizer controls? (of course that means crippling the sound even via the audio jack) What's the critical frequency? I think I remember having read something about 125Hz, but that might be totally wrong.