Right. Before I really start getting into the Mer^2 work I would like to just note a couple of things that will influence things in the future:

* I will be primarily focusing on the N810, not the N800. This means: I won't be spending too much time with the virtual keyboard, I won't be pursuing a stylus keyboard like Fremantle does it. Others are welcome to and patches happily accepted. I need personally to focus and I've decided I'll do this on the N810.

* The final installation will be a complete reflash - I'm not going to spend much time on dual-boot (it may or may not work easily).

* On a N800, you will need to dedicate at least a 2GB SD card permanently seated in the internal SD slot specially partitioned. On N810, we will need to repartition the internal SD.
* The base system will be Debian 5.0 but with a lot of things replaced so it looks (from technical point of view) closer to a Maemo 5.0 installation.

* I will try to seek permission to recompile most of the Fremantle system on top of these ported packages, which will only be legally
available for N800 and N810(W). We'll see how much will work.

* The system will not in any way be 100% open source. We're trying to accomplish it working and possible to use by users on a daily basis, not have an agenda.

* We will need to provide some custom artwork to distinguish between real Maemo and Mer^2 - there should be no brand confusion.

* I will need some Gtk coders to step up to help shape the old hildon-desktop closer to Fremantle interface. It won't be as shiny, but it will perform it's purpose.