BTW: Thanks for that article. When I realized helping that other guy that the N900 really didn't have root "out of box" I was really infuriated as I was sure that I had seen somewhere a video or screenshot of someone doing it and no mention of rootsh at all. I believe that article was it.. it gives the impression of a completely open system.

This phrase:
Mislead me I guess... I read that as; whether you want to install an application - OR get root access.. the choice is yours. What it should really say is .. "install an application to get root access, it's you who decide."

That would have saved me a bit of heartache.

Exactly.
damn minimal character count

You guys are still failing to acknowledge they are all hacks. It's just in this case Nokia doesn't "care".. or even, to some extent, in somewhat sort of in a kinda round-about way actually support it.

Google and Apple both try and Patch their holes.. so people keep coming out with new ones. Round and Round they go, where they stop, nobody knows.

Nokia is more like "Meh... srsly.. it's not that big of a deal. Let em have it."

That's how I take it.

Well, Nokia is more than one person.
The Nokia N-series VP seemed to take it that way.
But on the other side, on the previous page you have the project manager talking about how he wanted to keep the "install any .deb" button...

And even then this is worse than the "actively against root access" how?

Yet again in a deadend topic that has been discussed a shitload of times...

What difference does it make if the user has a pump action or a semiautomatic should s/he choose to shoot him/herself in the foot?

You either stick to the repository of known good apps your you run the risk. Having a button is no more dangerous. It's not like it has "brick" in the menu you just tap while half asleep.

One needs to read up on it, enable it, push it, then browse to a package and agree.

Nothing saves you from that. If anything, having to jump through hoops is more of a warning than pasting unknown strings in the terminal.

If you paste stuff in terminal and you have no clue about what they do then no safeguard will help you. And depriving others of a feature is not the answer.

What next? iApproved iContent only?

I disagree.. as has been said several times, by many people.. in our experience.. "Click this, Click that" is more commonly followed than "type this, type that". People expect GUI's.

Even RevdKathy tried explaining that.. Oh well.. "deadlocked" topic is right.

Several people where posting extras-devel as the place to install from or even direct links to .deb files to average joe. At this point is the problem. This is a place for the whole community using Nxxx devices and the maemo OS or Mer, from user to root. Preventing easy file installation progress is the right answer I guess. It is a shame that this needed to happen! Maybe service hotline called for it after people calling with briked devices... who knows.

Please keep in mind that using stable repos is the best way for joe. Using devel repos, apt-get and dpkg is for geeks/devs familiar with it, so was redpill-mode. I run a testing distribution at home, I started it with thinking to be ready for it after about one year of administrating a linux OS. Installing .deb files screwed my system several times and I needed help from friends till I was familiar with it and could solve such problems myself. Sometimes it was a painful learning experience!

fatalsaint... bravo for standing your ground and forcing myself (and others) to view this problem in a different light since you had already run into this. This community rocks and Maemo has a chance if people stand behind it like this.

Just wanted to chime in and say that...

This is the problem. Imagine what would've happened if it was easy to install stuff from the developers repositories and stand alone debs. No average user would have cared that the apps were not ready, optified and so on. They'll just assume that that's the way maemo apps are and then moan when they can't install the firmware update or their battery life is miserable or the phone crashes every 10 minutes.
It leads to a worse user experience. And the only trade off is that you won't be able to recover your phone in the unlikely situation when you don't have internet connection, the app manager is down, you don't have rootsh installed and you don't have access to a computer. Which wouldn't help in an other scenario where the only way to recover it is to ssh into it.
Would I be happier if it has root and ssh out of the box, of course! But the platform would suffer, because the userbase is not ready for it.

Rootsh is available in the Extras... not testing, not devel, not anything. So "gaining" root has not been hidden, or in any way discouraged. It's in the user repository.

For me to take that argument seriously (that users shouldn't have it) - it needs to be permanently in testing. It is already so easy to get rootsh that it makes it pointless that it's not there by default.

I agree with the rest of your comment ColdFusion... Testing and Devel repositories have to be added by hand for a reason - and both come with a warning banner. Neither of these conditions apply to rootsh. It's already point-click easy to get root.. may as well just make it default. OR, if the intent is to protect users from themselves... bury it better. Pick a theory and go with it.. right now it makes no sense.