Wow did you order your Tablet from Amazon.com as well? (Tiger Direct is the sub-company) I too ordered a N800 and UPS says it is in Illinois as well waiting to be delivered on the 2nd as well. Creepy...

I'm not very Linux savvy myself so I can't really help you there so I look forward to seeing other folk's answers. Luckily I am used to OS X and Unix (from home and work respectively) so I'm not completely lost. Though that just means I know how to bring up directives and run stuff.