I agree with this rant that's not really a rant but a plea for help. . .

The problems discussed are some of the main reasons I'm still using OS2007 (well, when I had a working tablet that is).

Unfortunately it is not possible to satisfy everyone. A great example of that is that I like KDE and a stylus most of the time, and occasionally want to use some finger-based apps. Also I like RPM's and not DEBs. Other people, however, would vigorously and loudly disagree and protest. They may want a DEB-based OS that uses Hildon-Gnome and have all finger-based apps.

There is absolutely no way that Nokia can satisfy everyone. There is also no way that Nokia is going do much to support stuff for older tablets if/when new ones come out. They simply don't have the resources even if they wanted to.

What needs to happen is for Nokia to release enough of the closed-source stuff in the tablets to allow people to EASILY create an alternative distro for the tablets. This would solve the problem AND save Nokia money since they would not have to do all the OS development work themselves. It would also make everybody happy since they could easily fine tune the OS exactly to their needs.

The tablets are not PDA's (ok, they may be that for some users). They are basically full-blown handheld computers that have a few (very few, actually) things that are different from other x86-based PC's . So far in the history of computers there has been only ONE succesful computer manufacturer which also makes the OS. That is Apple. All others who have tried to make a computer+OS have failed in one way or another. I don't think Nokia is looking to become another Apple. They are already more, or at least as, sucessful as that. Nokia does not even make an OS for their phones. So I don't understand why in the world they would want to do so for something as low volume as these tablets.

Now I'm certain that people here are going to come back and say "wait a minute, Nokia is not making their OS, they are using Debian." That statement, however is false. Once you start mucking around with the OS so much that the only resemblance to the upstream distro is that it uses DEBs it becomes a new OS. Besides, Debian is FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software. If there is one thing Maemo is absolutely not, well that is FLOSS.