The Linux on Nokia 770/N800 is a very bad example of a distribution since die idea of free software is blocked by the need of a company to sell their products. For example you can run Gentoo Linux on your 10 year old hardware (and perhaps even older one). You can develop applications on the old hardware for the new hardware and vice versa. This does not seem to be possible with Maemo since there must be a reason to buy the newest hardware even if most of the new applications do not need a newer device. Hence there will ever be too few applications for our devices and perhaps many of bad quality.