For those who have tried to compile on the n900, you might notice it is a bit slow since an ARM CPU is great for general use, but not---for example---compiling a kernel. It, however, often useful to compile natively on the architecture you will be using. Originally this process was used to configure a distcc farm for the mini2440 ARM(el) board---and this is directly applicable to the n900 platform---and it works on my phone!