Brief status report:

Boot.scr is on both EXT and FAT partition. U-boot boots correctly from sd if I run
is that what it's supposed to do?

I was confused because I thought there should be an option on the u-boot menu (pali's) like MeeGoCE

Now I don't know how I got there but I have overlapping partitions on the SD.

On the installation options, i copied the contents /lib/firmware from the N900 on the computer in the folder ~/ubuntu-n900/firmware (probably this is irrelevant, but I want to be as specific as possible).

I chose my 8GB SD (/dev/sdd) and inputed the following
fat partition: 2
root partition: 4
swap: 1000

then I did the recommended dist-upgrade, and then I installed some extra packages from the list (nano, htop, ofono, telepathy and one or two more, but not the fso-thing)

During the dist-upgrade, fstab and something else (udev?) complained they couldn't find the root partition.

Finally I answered no to the question about chroot bash.

After boot start I get some errors about overlapping partitions (confirmed with gparted on PC) and swapon fails (along with something else that I don't remember) however ubuntu boots fine, and gets to graphics mode.

I could finish the start wizard successfully and get to unity (albeit extremely slowly - suppose due to no swap) There I can launch system settings and nautilus (didn't try firefox) but the dash emits an error and is empty (searching for the terminal returns nothing too)

That is all.

Thanks guys for the superb job, I will start all over again some time soon and report back. By the way, if I do the whole process with a card reader instead of the N900 connected in mass storage, should it work?