It sounds like your used to being pampered by a single entity that controls the entire stack (Microsoft)

This is not the case on Maemo given it's Linux heritage, as such you will find the tools in your kit to be more of an ad-hoc collection of utilities than a big monolithic entity (Visual Studio).

I do python development on the device, but come from a linux background so this was simple for me. Maemo is still pretty fresh, and I don't know of any absolute beginner resources.

I'd highly recommend playing with Ubuntu in VMWare for a bit to familiarize yourself with linux as a user before diving headlong into development.

For an IDE, I don't use them myself, but you might like Eclipse, it's the closest analogue to VS in this universe.