I probably just couldn't find this discussed before as it seems an obvious question/path: What would we end up with if we compiled a minimal OS with all the apps separately loadable and not "built in"? It would seem to me then we could work on and upgrade the apps and OS separately and end up with something much more usefull to those of us that want the 770/N800 to be a real computer . Most (all?) of the Nokia apps already have better 3rd party counterparts that we could port, document and support better than Nokia if we left the official Nokia firmware in the dust . Actually it almost appears that Nokia is going the "separation" route itself but still seems stuck on the idea of having some of their crappier apps permanently loaded .

Why not just port the open source apps? Of course someone actually has to do the work... In regards to the non-open source stuff, I think that the best app on there is Opera, which is not open source. That's just my opinion though.

errr.. correct me if i'm wrong, but isn't that the whole point of the debian package management?

Sorry - I'm too much of a Linux noob to understand if your reply is to my comment or RoadRanger's. Anyway, my point is that right now, not a lot of those third party apps are running on the tablet. I think we should at least get to that point before we start talking about taking stuff out.

BTW, I've read that Chinook (Maemo 4.0 - a firmware or few from now) will support partial upgrades, and so I presume that to mean "apt-get dist-upgrade" essentially. If you want to help make the tablet better, help port an app and/or file bugs in bug trackers rather than itt.

But... will it ever be ported and supported by Nokia on the 770 and N800? Nokia treats these devices as phones - where you are expected to buy the new model every year (or two at the max...).

I think there would be more work done on apps if there was a truely open OS. The browser is the biggest issue - personally I'd rather not have flash (I have it turned off), java and microsoft's active whatever on my machine but I know many of you couldn't do without . I should look up what the "real" linux distros are using? I haven't tried minimo(sp? the ported browser app)
but suspect it would do what I need .

Biggest problem is that they often need to be re-ported when Nokia changes their hardware or "upgrades" the firmware so why expend the effort when there isn't a "stable" platform to work with?

Roadranger, as far as I know, its not only stripping out proprietary applications like opera. There's also closed stuff (like UI components) that are on a lower level, even hardware drivers IIRC.

I agree it would be the best thing to remove any proprietary stuff, therefore become completely independent of Nokias inhouse development and practically do whatever we want to do with both the 770 and the N800.

There is some work on its way, see Ångström as only one example. AFAIK, though, they all suffer from the problem that they cannot address all hardware in the device because there's simply no open driver for it.

A second option is to wait for Gnome Mobile&Embedded Platform to gain enough momentum. This could lead to an independent but still Maemo-like distribution that works on Nokias Internet Tablets - see Ubuntu Embedded for example.

An other solution is to use python and pygtk