Besides the over-written passwd file and resolv.conf files... whats the difference? You used his as a basis for your chroot in your initial how-to's and wiki correct?? So I imagine you used his as the basis for your .img???
I also noticed that your icewm menu looked a lot cleaner than mine from when I did it manually via your wiki on downloading his .tar.gz, unzip it to a partion, create the scripts manually, etc.. I ran an apt-get install icewm and booted it and it was nice.. but the menu system was cluttered.. was a mess of stuff in there that I had to find.. etc.
after that - debian will be pretty much as functional; with more power; than the Maemo base, IMHO.