As I'm a newbie when it comes to mobile devices, but I'm a bit confused when posts say that the n900 doesn't have many apps. Isn't maemo based on debian? And if so, doesn't one (at least theoretically) have access repos with 1000s of applications?

The reason I ask is that I am considering whether to buy the n900. I'm not particularly interested in cheesy iPhone or Android mobile apps. I just want a pocket computer that can run all the beautiful *nix software I rely on (vim, emacs, w3m, etc.)

So two questions:

1) When people say that maemo 5 doesn't have a lot of apps, are they specifically referring to apps tweaked for the mobile device/touchscreen?

2) Am I completely naive in thinking that one can install .deb packages on this thing?