Ok i have to admit, i'm a little bit frustrated. I'm really loving my n800. I've found it really useful at work and great fun at home. Now before I go any further I should say that I'm no developer, but I'm a reasonably technical guy. But my biggest problem is that I suffer from a extreme lack of time to really play around. See I'm perfectly capable of playing around and trying things out especially where there are nice clear tutorials, but I'm struggling to find n800 specific info. The vast majority of stuff being for 770 and os 2006.

This site forum is great, but even the best message board help can at times be or at least seem contradictory, and I've seen too many flames on here to not spend a great deal of time searching for answers.

On the other hand the wiki seems potentially informative, but it's impossible to tell 770 vs 800 info from the index, and in fact the vast majority of references on there are specifically for the 770, and frankly the maemo site and wiki are no better. All of which leads me back to feeling like there is a distinct lack of well organised info on the 800 specifically for noobs.

Ok, enough rambling. What would be really helpful for me, and I imagine other non-dev noobs would be either an n800 wiki (is there one somewhere?), or a split to the current wiki on this site, breaking it up into specific 770 and 800 sections with straight forward, well organised info on installing things like GAIM, SSH, and all the basic info on respositories etc etc. Basically something that us noobs can use and easily find!

Does that seem too much to ask for?

You're absolutely right, there needs to be a more coordinated Wiki/FAQ and a better application catalog that actually contains working apps and not stuff with "missing install file." But this forum is the best place for N800 info - the official Nokia sites aren't all that great yet. However, I place the responsibility for providing that kind of support on Nokia if they want this platform to take off.

When reading the Wiki it helps to remember that OS 2007=N800 and OS 2006/2005=770.

I will post the third part of my noobiefied dualboot how to this weekend. Once its up, software install guides and configs will follow.

Schmots-

Where have you been posting the original two parts? Here on this board? I think that's a big part of my struggle. Any help posted here, rapidly drops off and then it becomes a fun game of guess the right search term!

For everyone else. Generally speaking would people be willing to write specific help articles for a completely consumer facing n800 wiki? (or at least allow for their posts to be copied into it?) I'm definitely considering setting up something, but I'm greatly concerned about my skills and time (first kid on the way).

schmots guide is on his blog. click the link in schmots signature

The OS naming thing is confusing to me too. I don't want to keep track of N800 = Maemo = IT OS 2007 (and then have to know what bora is when I'm browsing packages). I wish there was just one name or version number for the OS, and that it was used consistently.

It's pretty simple. Really.
N800 is the device
Maemo is the distribution (2005, 2006, 2007 for both N800 and 770)
OS 2007 is for N800 only, and OS2005/2006 are for 770 only
Bora/scirocco/gregale/etc. are code names for a sub-releases of 2005/2006/2007 (3.0,2.1,2.2)

There isn't "one name or version number", as they all refer to different things.

"It's all really simple" (I joke) unless you're unfamiliar with the Linux/Unix/OSX, and/or even the command line side of things or programming. Let alone that Nokia releases the N800 and makes it and most all of it's future software non backwards compatible with the N770, but yet the great open source community is trying its darndest to keep both platforms on an even playing field. So for a "newbie" that just walked into this bloodbath it can be very confusing and extremely overwhelming to try to find and figure out the differences..

Its ironic !
As I wrote earlier it will be no help to increase the Maemo community by separating the OS. It is a very stupid strategy
to think that separating the OS increases the earnings of Nokia.
The more devices with the newest version of Maemo are
there the more developer do we have.

I have not thought of this case that also users get confused.