Try here: http://pidgin.garage.maemo.org

Thank you all for putting up with my idiocy. I finally have pidgin installed. In fact, I'm typing this and the last post off the n800. Usually people say RTFM in linux forums.

I've ordered 2 8GB sd cards for the n800, with a case and screen protector. I still have a few minor questions for you:

1. The right 1/4 inch of my screen is darker than the rest. Should I try for my warranty (I bought an extended warranty, since I've wanted a bokia tablet since I saw the 770 in linux journal in the library).

2. Can I turn off auto complete in the software keyboard?

3. I created a new folder under apps. Besides change where apps are located, can I move the folders' order around (put tools at the bottom) and can I rename the default foldrrs. For example, tools and utilities sound too alike. I want to rename tools to system tools.

4. Sometimes the touch screen doesn't register my taps. Any help?

Thanks again.

Control Panel - Text Input Settings - Word Completion
Try Control Panel - Navigation - Applications Organise
But it looks as if it doesn't allow changes to everything.
I've noticed that recently. I thought maybe I was getting old.

I am sooo tempted to say RTFM. But I can't find the emoticon for Irony.

That's been widely reported on the N800 and is pretty normal. It is due to the design of the LCD sidelight.

Thanks for all your help. Especially technut. I have stumbled into one more question (watch me post "one more question" several times over the next few days).

Whenever I download a new repository, it always asks if I want to refresh my catalog. I say yes. It takes a while, and always says "Unable to refresh list. Last refreshed list is shown." Why is this? Also, despite the warning, the new packages always show up, even though the n800 is "unable to refresh list". Is this bad, or just typical?

I also head the n800 has 128MB internet flash. I though it was referring to the free 128 MB miniSD card it came with. Apparently not? My memory card only contains sample movie clips and music (If my music and anime wouldn't play on my n800, there's no point of buying 2 8GB SD cards). All my apps must be installed into the internal flash, right? So if I download more than 128 MB of apps, my external SD cards can be used, right?

Another video question. The default player says it can play fullscreen videos, but alas, I found that it will only play my widescreen videos. Which is weird. Specifically, when I try to play a fullscreen video, it say "Resolution not supported". Luckily, Mplayer plays my videos beautifully. I guess my question is, is the default media player really so bad it can't play fullscreen video?

Thanks again for all your help. BTW, all my spelling errors in my last post (bokia, foldrrs?) were mostly because I typed it on the n800. Now I'm on my full-sized qwerty keyboard. Geez, look at that. I thought I'd only ask one more question, and I ended up asking three.

Indeed. Well I'm pretty new at this myself (just got my N800 last month) but I'll answer what I can.

The App Manager has a log file you can view in the menu. See if it is flagging a particular repository as being a problem or reporting any other error.

The N800 actually has 256MB of internal flash memory. I was asking about it myself just yesterday.... I don't know of any way to install apps elsewhere, but I'm a Linux noob. If it ever becomes necessary then I'm sure someone here can tell us how to do it. I copied most of the crap that was on there to an SD card and deleted it from the internal flash. So far it doesn't look like I'll run out of space if I continue to keep media and other large files on SD.

I haven't played with much media files, maybe someone with more experience with video can give you advice on that. I do know that mplayer is often recommended as having better media format compatibility than the default player.

For the refresh error, as technut said there's a log there. You can ignore the warnings in the log, but if there's an error you should (possibly just temporarily) look for and disable that repository (click 'details' in the list of repostories to get access to a tick box for disabling it).

The 256MB internal flash of the N800 (and N810) is the internal 'hard disk', or storage. It's set up as a compressed file system, so it actually stores much more than 256MB. The operating system itself is on this flash storage, as well as your own files. The SD cards are mounted (=made available) in such a way that the 'execution' flag is not set, this means that applications can't be installed on the card(s) and expected to run. With the exception of scripts, which can be made to run with a slight trick.
However, it's possible to change the mounting so that the 'exec' flag isn't disabled for one or both cards, it's been discussed in the past and you can probably find it in some thread. (It may be as easy as editing /etc/fstab, but I'm not certain - didn't try that myself. For any ordinary Linux system that _would_ be sufficient.)

Thanks TA-t3, I hadn't realized the OS itself was actually stored in the "device memory" area. For some reason I thought the OS would be in locked-down memory somewhere completely separate, and treated as ROM. That might be an old carry-over from my Palm PDA days.

I thought the 256MB device memory would be completely available for user apps and data. I appreciate the clarification.

Ahh, another question has popped up in my head.

Once, due to the n800's responsiveness (or lack there of), I tapped hard enough so that when I let go of my stylus, a little blob of colors appeared (like touching a LCD computer monitor too hard) The blob of colors surrounding where the stylus had just touch - can this cause permanent damage? If so, what did I cause? I should note that I only did this a few times out of frustration, and it was my fault, as mozilla with a flash video (youtube) was on.

Ah, yet another question. My browser (minimo) likes to crash after watching a flash video. Any reason why? This is wild to see debian, the most stable, one of the oldest linux distros, crashing maybe once a day.

Thanks!

EDIT: I wanted to say I looked at the log of the app manager. No luck really. I tried apt-get update, and it told me which repository was the problem, and I fixed it.

You may have damaged your lcd screen, but if things still work then it won't get any worse, presumably. What could have made it worse is that there's a digitizer below the lcd screen, that's a thin sheet of some material that recognizes where you tap the stylus. With bad luck you could have permanently made a connection with the digitizer where you pressed too hard, after that nothing would have worked because the N800 digitizer is a single-tap digitizer. This is a quite common problem when installing screen protectors, because if you press a bit too hard (to get the bubbles out) the digitizer gets permanently engaged. Fortunately it will normall rectify itself just by peeling off the screen protector (and thus lifting the LCD away from the digitizer).