Most of the stuff I usually need runs nicely:

emacs23 with tools and extensions
maemotex
R (Statistics and graphics)
gnuplot, phreeqc (geochemical) and cxtfit (hydrogeological simulation)

Due to space restrictions all packages reside under /usr/local which is symlinked to a ext3-formatted partition on the external card.

Do expect some delays for initial startup, after that even simulations run reasonably fast.