you can get some of those basic tools by adding the fremantle/tools repository:

Catalog name: Maemo Fremantle Tools
Web address: http://repository.maemo.org/
Distribution: fremantle/tools
Components: free non-free
Disabled: unchecked


List of apps (from an Italian site):
Code Analysis
doxygen a source code documentation generator tool
gtk-doc an API documentation generator

Debugging
gdb GDB is the GNU debugger
functracer an allocation backtrace tool
functracer-postproc a post-processing tool for functracer output data
latrace display a program’s dynamic library calls
ltrace a library call tracer
maemo-debug-scripts a set of scripts to help with debugging tasks
sp-error-visualizer displays log messages as banners
sp-rich-core a core dump data saver
sp-response-time a library for monitoring UI response times
sp-startup-time a library for calculating application startup times
strace a system call tracer
syslog a log message collecting service
valgrind a suite of tools for debugging and profiling programs
x11-utils a collection of X Window System debugging tools; xev, xwininfo, xprop, xlsatoms and xlsclients.

Miscellaneous
less a text file viewer/pager
osso-xterm a terminal emulator
man-db manual page infrastructure
screen provides access to detachable console sessions

Editors
nano a friendly text editor
vi a text editor

Graphics
screenshot-tool a command line utility to take screenshots
xresponse measures the time taken to update the screen after user action
xresponse-visualize scripts for visualizing xresponse logs

Networking
iputils a collection of TCP/IP related utilities
netcat a utility to read and write data across network connections
tcpdump a network traffic capturing utility
traceroute print the route packets take to a network host
wget a utility to non-interactively download files from the Web

Performance
oprofile a low overhead system wide profiler
oprofileui a user interface to oprofile
sp-startup-time a library for calculating application startup times
valgrind a suite of tools for debugging and profiling programs
xresponse measures the time taken to update the screen after user action
xresponse-visualize scripts for visualizing xresponse logs

Resource Usage
functracer an allocation backtrace tool
functracer-postproc a post-processing tool for functracer output data
htop an interactive process viewer
sp-endurance tools to collect system endurance related information
sp-endurance-postproc postprocessing scripts to parse and generate a report from endurance measurement data
sp-memusage a collection of memory usage monitoring tools and scripts
sp-smaps-measure utilities for taking snapshots of smaps memory information
sp-smaps-visualize utilities for analyzing smaps memory information
sysstat tools for collecting and reporting system activity information
valgrind a suite of tools for debugging and profiling programs
xrestop shows X clients’ X resource usage

Test Automation
check a unit test framework for C
sp-stress tools to create artificial system load
xnee automate user actions under X11
xresponse measures the time taken to update the screen after user action

Wireless Tools
bluez-hcidump a tool to monitor Bluetooth activity
wireless-tools tools for manipulating Linux Wireless Extensions


You've got to use apt-get or red pill mode on the application manager.