I'm also confused on this part... What do you mean about why aren't many apps hosted here? The majority of the apps for the N900 (thousands of them) are hosted in the extras/extras-testing/extras-devel repositories, which are directly linked to the garages here on maemo.org via the auto-builder.

To my knowledge the only other large repository for N900 apps would be Nokia's OVI store, where you have to pay (a minimal fee) to get access. That said, there are a few other repositories with N900 apps (Opera, Mozilla, and a few others), but those are mainly one-offs for the builds they support directly for this platform. Mainly because they have the resources already and don't want to bother learning other systems to push their app to another community.

Where else are you seeing a trove of N900 apps?

"What is the story on my-maemo.org? Why the separate site? Why aren't many of the applications also hosted here? I'm guessing an approval process? "

I thought the sentences were clear. "Why aren't many of the applications (hosted on aforementioned site, my-maemo.org) also hosted here (maemo.org)?

Hopefully that cleared it up.

Thank you for your comments/suggestions.

Abe

I'm here for much shorter time than You, but to my knowledge, above sentence is only true for talk.maemo.org, not maemo.rg as a whole. So, ITT was "transferred" to talk.maemo.org domain. Root of some funny things (like always non-ideal integration of maemo.org and talk.maemo.org accounts) is there

/Estel

// Edit

Abe, you've also asked about kernel-power. It's effort to backport mainstream kernel things, that fits N900 need + own KP patches, tied specifically to N900. Definitely a must.

I've also forget to mention busybox-power - fortunately, others fixed that. It is backport of mainstream busybox version, which some specific patches - sometimes, those patches even affected mainstream busybox (wonderful work of iDont become included in mainstream busybox).

Generally, those things (backupmenu, KP, CSSU, busybox-power - mentioned in my and other people posts) are essential thing for every power-user. Treat is as even higher priority than OpenSSH

Many people also suggested packages, that are far from being "essential" - like opera, music players etc. Personally, I would avoid suggesting such things to new member - everyone should install what she/he fancy.

BTW, do you know that Easy Debian is going to have new, pure Squeeze image soon, thanks to Sulu's work? Of course it's totally up to You, but I would wait for a while with customizing it, then apply personal patches/tweaking to Squeeze version

/Estel

I'm also new to the n900, my-maemo.com looks like a third-party website with news and tips and a collection of direkt links to debs from various sources.There are links to the maemo.org repository and to ubuntuone.com for example.

Seems some programs compiled for ubuntu-arm and/or debian-arm work well out of the box and this website lists them.

Close to 90% of them are.... my-maemo actually doesn't have a repository at all. Click one of the download links (through 4 pages of ads) and you'll find the install file points to the repository at maemo.org (or one or two other sites as mentioned above). It's like saying "Why don't you have all the apps here vs the ones Google has?"

Admittedly, my-maemo.com has a nice interface, with screen shots of lots of the apps in the repository. At least until a certain date anyway... Looks like whoever was doing it has a script still pulling new stuff, but hasn't updated screen shots and such in a while. (Thus the "no icon" on newer items.)

As for must-have apps, I concur with Estel on one of them: BackupMenu. Make a backup, tweak like crazy, then make another when you're stable. It can really save your butt if you make a mistake, even if you just want a backup of a system file. (It's just a big compressed tar file...)

As for the "requirements" here, there's no requirements for putting stuff in extra-devel. Other than learning how to do so. Promoting things to extra-testing and extra proper on the other hand, yes... it's a bit of a filter, but it forces things in those layers to be a bit more stable. There's chatter now of loosening regulations a bit, with the slowing pace of development and testers. But as a system, it did it's job well over the past decade.

And yes, Estel... I though I made it clear that the forum was originally from tablettalk. The rest is from Maemo itself (garages, wiki, etc) and the talk forum was pulled in later. That's part of why there's a disconnect between they systems. (Different logins, etc.) Thanks for clarifying it a bit more though, since I wasn't apparently concise enough to get that across?

I must really come off as computer illiterate.

Wait, what's a 'puter again?

I never actually followed a link. Had I, I would have easily discerned that the files were hosted elsewhere. Thanks for the help though.

Kind regards,

Abe