I know this is a specific answer to a general question, but bc seems to be available:

http://repository.maemo.org/pool/fremantle/free/b/bc/

Once you enable this repo, I imagine you can install it with apt-get bc (haven't tried this, but have installed other packages like tcpdump, strace, ... in a similar way).


You can see the other packages not listed in the "official" repos by browsing around

http://repository.maemo.org/pool/fremantle/free/

Or with apt-cache search <pkgname> once you have the device