Well, it looks like I can answer my own question with this quote:

I tried Mer for the first time this week. Not a bad start--but it needs a lot of finesse and work. Can anyone explain how I can help with bug testing/reporting or anything I can do in my capacity for testing or artwork. I can program but only in shells, Perl and Python in any particularly useful way, anyway as an admin, not a developer.

ALSO: Two things...

1) It's spartan and minimalist--with VERY VERY little pre-installed. THANK YOU! That's what I wanted in an open-source OS. Give me just a clean slate with nothing much more than an app installation tool and let ME decide on what I want. THANK YOU VERY MUCH!
2) Are there any repositories out there from which to obtain software? It seems like the app manager has nothing available.

Greetings, this is my first post. I have lurked reading a ton of old threads in the past few weeks after getting my n800 from ebay. It was a quick gadget fix while I wait another device on pre-order. I have to say that I rather like this small slate (the kickstand makes a lovely handle too I must say). I love using the mythfrontend port and despite the lack of keyboard if I need it, my iGo bluetooth works great with it. It has replaced my netbook for my portable RSS companion, streamer, episode/movie watcher on the go and rocks as an mp3 player (speakers sound much better and louder than an Aspire One I used to own LOL) I could continue gushing a bit and you've all heard it before; so enough.....sorry for coming to the table so late and I do hope that there will be extra helpings of dinner. Many thanks to all the chefs that have made delicious ingredients for my tablet and also the ones who have provided some spices to make the user experience a more flavourful one. It tends to be more exciting when you're around watching the live progress rather than catching reruns but the first taste of something always seems to be as good.

* I have a N800 (will eventually get an 810 as well and have no interest in the n900)

* I'm interested to use mer on my device with the new 3D drivers implemented, and an updated mythfrontend port.

* I'm willing to contribute with time to assist bug hunting, I have assisted other devs in other areas in the past.

* If winning the lottery would happen, I would then be able to give free beer to all of the hard working devs out there

Cheers guys!

EDIT: I have tried Mer, I was impressed, checked out v16 and saw 17 on the horizon.....then possible new video drivers so I keep it in mind until next version is released. I've put a lot of time into my current environment and would like to do the same with Mer when r17 is released....keep going redshirts!

It's been four days and nobody answered my questions? Really?

on the mer repo thing, i think its mostly that they have not much compiled, as its still being tested.

Thanks, Tso! I thought there would be at least a handful of apps or something to try out. I suspected that maybe I was missing an extras or testing repo where there were apps to try out. That's perfectly reasonable, though, and I'll shush up for now.

Probably because the questions would bring the thread off-topic.

I'm still using my n810 heavily and don't plan to upgrade for a while, so I am definitely interested in seeing n810 stuff continuing.

I also tried Mer, but managed to break things to the point of having to reflash that last Diablo release. On the plus side, now that all of the fragments of stuff I installed, tried, and disposed of are gone, the n810 seems faster and I got something like 30 MB of "disk" space back.

- John

Right, so:

My path currently is taking Fremantle code, adjusting it a bit for N8x0, rebuilding it for N8x0. This is a short term project and going quite decently atm.

MeeGo may or may not run on N8x0. If it works, we might have it running. But I don't know anything until we get code out MeeGo's (defined as -not Harmattan-) has a longer timeframe.