ok i am a noob and i feel that i know nothing compared to other pros in the forum. They are pros in hacking and modifying their N900's

Should noobs buy N900s??

Hey!
Well, I'm pretty good at computers but I know NOTHING about Linux. I'm not a programmer and don't understand a thing of how the N900 is made of, or how it is programmed.
To answer your question, YES noobs should buy it because even though it runs on Maemo, everything is so simple and user-friendly in it. For sure, as a noob, you can't be as risky as a pro (don't install any applications, wait until they are tested).
I've had about 14 phones in my life including an iPhone and a Nokia e71 and I can say hands down that this is the best phone I've ever had.

Im a 'noob' ... i know nothing much in regards to what others in this forum are discussing ... its mostly alien to me!
But i will say the following

1) The N900 is easy enough to use for an end user that knows nothing about the inner workings/programming
2) If you have a problem with your N900 just stick a post in here and someone helps you out very quickly (thanks to all that have helped me)
3) By reading what people are doing in these forums I have gained a bit of a knowledge to the 'advanced' side of using an N900 such as using x terminal to do something on my phone (as shown in this post where someone helped me out http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php...052#post466052 )

So yes, it's definatley worth getting an N900 ... it is sooooo good, everyone who i've shown it to are wishing they had one (although some dont say it, I KNOW thats what they are thinking)

I identify as slightly more knowledgeable thank gtessier00. I've been using linux for years and program, but I'm hardly a professional dev.

@OP: I think what you may also be asking, is what type of communities are there for you being a "newbie". I know this site can seem intimidating, but there's nothing wrong with lurking!

Also there are many other forums with different levels of user. Howardforums is one I would suggest, as it's more of a "phone user" site. That being said, maemo.org is still the mommy site.

Hope this helps

Me neither

I have it for less than a month and I already have modification and brainstorm threads.
It's very easy to "hack around" as long as you use use OpenSSH and a SCP application on your pc to have wide access across the system files.

You need to know three things:
1)if you modify the menu & nothing shows changed, start over and don't reboot - smthg is wrong
2)don't manually edit sudoers - I'm sure you'll find out what they are
3)don't delete stuff you don't know about

As long as you have a backup while playing where "you shouldn't", N900 is nothing but fun!

Hope you enjoy it as much as I do

it's for noobs who are able and willing to learn.(i'm a noob, and it's helping me learn/refresh linux) it's a good device for learning. friendly enough to use even if don't understand much. takes quite a bit more skill than an iPhone, but not linux os command line skills or anything like that (though i'm sure it wouldn't hurt for dev and debugging).

no need to be pro. if you have patience to wait, a hell lot of stuff will be coming to extras -repo in the future. normal usage can be done without even noticing that device runs linux.