(Sorry to continue to hijack my own thread, but I wish someone at Nokia or Maemo would actually do something about the situation - they tell me I'm not playing by the rules, but their installer or repositories or something is badly broken from the start)

OK, on my "other tablet", an n800, I just reflashed back to the RX34-Diablo image and didn't restore anything - no memory cards in the system so it should be back to factory or very close. I did the two feature updates (first map/feature, which rebooted, then a second feature, which also rebooted).

I then enabled then disabled the extras repository.

With the "extras" enabled, apparently all of these are "user":

bash2 bzip2 gnuzip gnutar gpesyncd iptables-ext iptraf libzlibrary openssh rootsh rsync unzip unrar vim zip zip3.

Disabling "extras" still left the can't-install "maemo-mapper-topomaps-fi", and the can install but why "libuiw".

No red pill, just flash-to-factory, upgrade (reboot), upgrade (reboot), enable extras (caused update), browse list, disable extras (caused update), browse list.

Works wonderfully and makes perfect sense.