LXDE actually Installed for me.

Getting Mer to use it requires some work - since that hildon stuff is all used right now.. but it installed without error. Haven't tried Gnome or KDE since I've been able to boot Mer for about 3 hours now... and the entire time without internet connectivity .

@fatalsaint: Where did you get the e17 packages you compiled? There is a new module that was created for devices like N8x0 called illume that I'm wanting to try out. Supposedly, they were able to install a full E17 linux distro with under 32MB RAM used (which must be no doubt limited in usability). http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS7635920803.html
I was just interested in figuring out if this could run in deblet and Mer (and I can't imagine why it couldn't).

That's strange... i tried gnome at the same day ubuntu-arm team got it compiled. And it worked well but slowly. (at the beginning of the december)

EDIT: Mer + Gnome = BAANG !!
If you want to use gnome, forget about Mer, you have to use clean Jaunty. Maemo's packages conflict with gnomevfs2 or something.

Maybe they will work together later ..

neatojones - IIRC I got them from Debian's Experimental site and just re-compiled them because debian didn't have them for ARMEL yet... either that - or I got the .tar.gz off of Enlightenment's website. Don't really recall ATM.

Never heard of Illume... I'll take a look.

Ubuntu Jaunty is definitely the way to go; I tried installling Ubuntu MID in my chroot, it installed completely but boy, I'm warning you, don't run it in a chroot on display :1 using Xephyr (unless you know something I don't)... it conflicts badly with maemo (they use the same services) and it ends up crashing the tablet.

LXDE in Ubuntu Jaunty, on the other hand, is nice, especially if you install the Human theme and the Ubuntu Artwork package, then you can make your desktop look very Ubuntu indeed.

I got jaunty up and running in chroot. Still no joy with booting into it. It tried modifying the guide to running deblet 770 on to get it going but still didn't get it. I also tried setting it up for mer, but I actually ended up messing up my deblet because I mistakenly mounted it for part of the time...oops. Anyone have any suggestions?

By the way, I don't recommend setting up ubuntu-desktop or xubuntu-desktop packages in jaunty...unless you have a very large swap and a lot of time...but it does work.

Using MER I've been able to boot into LXDE Ubuntu Jaunty... works nicely.

Xorg has some issues... but once we get Xorg 100% I think we might be able to get Dual Screens *crosses fingers*.

There is several xorg how to's on using USB-VGA adapters for dual monitors.. but xorg hasn't worked until now.

Are the MER repos down? I haven't been able to access them since yesterday.

They appear to be working for me?? I dont have internet to my tablet ATM so I can't verify but I did an update this morning and it didn't fail checking the packages.

http://repository.mer.tspre.org/dists/alpha/

Meh...it's working for me now. Oh well.
I couldn't go to any of the http://*.tspre.org web pages. But, they all seem to work now.