The Maemo OS is very much Linux, tthough I'm no expert and the N800 was my entry to Linux; I've since gravitated to Xubuntu and Puppy Linux on other machines and find all three diistros complementary in many ways. Others can address scriptability, but the number of apps ported to Maemo is miniscule compared with Ubuntu. As for Word, a program called doc Reader opened Word docs on the N800, but I don't think it's been adapted for Maemo OS2008 yet. I LOVE my N800, but I've been a little bit disappointed with the quantity & quality of developer passion for this platform. Word processing and PIM options are poor to nil (though setting up the N800 to run Palm apps could be one solution). I'm guessing (as a non-programmer) that it's not very easy to modify Linux software to run in Maemo or there'd be a lot more choices. Still, web, email, games, a command-line terminal, PDF reader, e-books, music, FM and Internet radio, movies and video, picture viewer, VOIP phone, Bluetooth keyboard capacity, 16 gigs of removable storage, all in your pocket and running open-source software -- that's cool.