I don't know very much about easy debian, other users, correct me if I am wrong.
1) It's not virtual machine or emulation, it's an ARMel Debian distro that run natively like any other application, so you can't run x86 binary like on desktop but you can use adapted applications like GIMP,OpenOffice.org, via LXDE or hildon window (GIMP works only via LXDE)

2)???

3)The Debian rootfs is in /.debian/ and can't access to Maemo rootfs (but can acces to /home/ and MyDocs

4)Start and stop LXDE session is very fast on my device, /.debian is still mounted after exiting but this don't affect performances.

5)You just need to install Easy Debian(who also install Easy Chroot and application shortcuts) and the ext3 image( via a very user-friendly programm)

6) It use the same ip adress as Maemo, nothing to configure, I can access to the network without problems

7)Yes, use the Debian-Chroot shortcut for acceding to the Debian command line

Edit: wow, I think that I am the only for who Maemo.org was down