@fanoush: Agreed. Everything is a compromise. The trick is finding the *right* compromise. To make the system fit into 128MB of flash (probably more like 256MB uncompressed) you lose a lot of functionality. Meanwhile I haven't taken even the most basic measures with Debian to make it lighter. Switching the default shell (not the user's shell...) to dash and skipping quite a few services that autostart will save lots of RAM. Recompiling critical packages with better optimization is possible as well without breaking compatibility with upstream Debian. Nokia didn't really try that hard to stay compatible with Debian. IIRC, their lsb package is more like Debian's lsb-core, for example and that's a ton of breakage right there.

BTW, I *will* have my cake and eat it, too...it will just take some time.

-John