This is a great idea. If someone doesn't pick this up before me I'll definitely go this route when I get back to this stuff. Unfortunately, my schedule is screwed for the next 3 weeks. In the meantime, just because, here are some instructions to get an SD card rollin':

Maybe choose a Class 6 from this page. I recently purchased this one. Then:

Turn off
Insert microSD card in n900
Turn on
And as root in an xterminal, type the following:

WARNING: Same as above

sfdisk /dev/mmcblk1 << EOS
,100,b***
,3900,L
,,L
EOS
# be patient and wait for the prompt to come back
mkfs.vfat /dev/mmcblk1p1
mkfs.ext3 /dev/mmcblk1p2
mkfs.ext3 /dev/mmcblk1p3
mkdir -p /mnt/mmc12
mount -t ext3 -o noatime,data=writeback /dev/mmcblk1p2 /mnt/mmc12
mount / /floppy
cp -a /floppy /mnt/mmc12/.chroot
# Be even more patient

The next step would be either the big post above (with a tiny list of other things) or a debian installer to be named later .

You don't need to do everything from the big post to get simple compiling going. After you get to the package install step, just install build-essential:

apt-get install build essential

Then you should be able to:

gcc mybiitchinapp.c -o mybiitchinapp

***This has a side effect (possibly bad) of letting certain programs think this vfat area is an archive space. I left it in because I think it makes booting from an SD card less painful (if one were to decide to go that route), but don't quote me on that.