Hello there TMO,

I have started writing a replacement user interface for what Maemo ships with on the N900. It runs completely without Maemo, on a normal Debian (debian900) installation. Fully open source (GPLv3) and compatible with standard Linux software, that every Linux distribution has packaged.

I call it penguinphone, and right now, it can display an application launcher, a task switcher and a status bar with a close button, completely efficient in C. You can even test it on your normal desktop Linux by running a X server inside your normal X server.

While that doesn't sound like much, it is just what I needed to start with the interesting applications, that will handle SMS and phone calls. It will take some time, until there's something to show-off again from my side, so that's why I made a cut and released what I have got so far. Maybe someone else might find this interesting and play around with it, and also I'm curious what you guys think about it and if there's still something left of the N900 community

I've written down a lot in the GitHub README.md, and taken a few screenshots, so go check them out if you like:

• Screenshots
• Source code and installation instructions
• Blog post