OK, new issue
After installing (barebones-x) I'm having trouble with wireless- the tablet doesn't seem to want to associate to networks. I've only tried it with an open network, so it's not a wep/wpa/whatever thing. This is a completely clean install, the first thing I've tried to set up is wireless networking.
I did notice that iwconfig shows the essid correctly, but it doesn't seem to change the channel (the channel stays at 0 despite changes to /etc/network/interfaces and/or iwconfig commands).
I saw elsewhere that sometimes it helps to copy the files from /lib/firmware on maemo into the same place in the debian filesystem, but that didn't seem to make any difference.
Any thoughts? Is any important wireless stuff missing from the barebones x install that is included with the xfce setup?
Making progress, I suppose