I had fun with the N800 when I first got it, but I'm at the point of giving up on it and chucking it in a drawer forever. The problem is repositories: seemed like a good idea at first, but boy is the implementation screwed up. I'm at my wits end with this. I was willing to invest a few hours getting repositories sorted out one time at the start, and I don't mind having to do an occasional minor fix, but I'm frustrated with applications that break for no apparent reason and turn out to have time-sucking repository problems when I try to update or re-install them. I'm starting to think that Nokia's future efforts with devices like the N900 are doomed to never enjoy much success if they can't improve this situation.

Case in point, now Canola doesn't work any more on my N800 since the last time I used it (finds local media files but says the file is not found when I try to play it). No apparent reason why it's suddenly broken. When I try to re-install it, it complains about dozens of missing dependencies (a lot to do with Python, which I also re-installed, and lightmediascanner). Why?? It installed fine when I first installed it, and I haven't removed any repositories. I've visited the Canola site and added their latest repository, no help.

So what the heck do I do now? It would take hours to painstakingly follow up each missing dependency in the Details list, locate repositories for each of tem, go through the process of adding them with all the long, long waits and frequent crashes. And I'm not sure it would help in the end, because those repositories should have been there in the first place. And am I going to see the same problem again next month for no apparent reason?

Can anyone suggest where I can find the right set of repositories, or at least how to fix the Canola problem?