ah well, I've managed to get Gnutar on my N900, just by adding an extra Extras-repository with distro set to Chinook. Gnutar installs fine and after that, Easy Debian install as well (although not fine)

Now I can't get it to work properly - it keeps asking for an ext2, although I've downloaded it. Trying to work around that as well. I know you're working on a N900-version as well (and I'm appreciating it), but I like to fool around with my N900 this way