yeah...as little closed source crud and spyfilth as possible...and the lack of a corp dictating what I personally can have or use...or take away...
the better.....preferably...

Be nice to run Bodhi proper...
Parabola ...
and about 50 other distros I got on mah mind
No necro-ing here....I'd like to fiddle with full Mer resurrection

Please stop this pessimistic tone in some of the posts in here. OF COURSE fremantle will run on Neo900. OF COURSE a real Linux will run on Neo900. It's all been said from beginning, it been the foundation premise. And nobody ever stated anything different.

cheers
jOERG

That's really not a problem. As was explained several times, installing pure Debian GNU/Linux will be pretty much supported out-of-box (and might be even installed out-of-box with our set of test scripts and some "welcome UI" to choose your desired OS and display instructions).

How am I contradicting myself? All I am saying is that I don't like Android, and if i wanted to buy one I would buy an android device. What I meant is that if we run any Linux based system, how will we get apps for it? Unless it runs like a desktop system, in which case we won't have the Facebook, Skype, etc... integration into the phone like we do with Maemo which is kind of important for me. It's a little off topic but my main problem with Android is the GUI and the lag, more than anything. This is one of the fundamental reasons I use Maemo, it's the best OS ever made. I just wish we could port it to use Android or iOS apps without having to run either of those OS (Kind of like blackberry did with OS10). Sure dual booting is an option, but what would be the point then?

My other concern was that even though the Neo900 has more ram than the N900.. I overclock my N900 to run at 1150mhz, so technically it's a faster speed than the 1GHZ processor on the Neo900 (unless we can overclock that even more)... Although the ram does matter a lot...

I don't think that there is pessimism as much as it appears like some actually haven't read the thread here and hence are asking questions which have already been answered.
For myself I will be ecstatic if/ when freemantle runs on my neo900 ...
I won't carve it in stone that such a demand is absolutely necessary to me...
I won't carve any demands in stone ...period.
I think the guys are doing an astounding job...and frankly.... I can only imagine the hurdles being leapt over...to bring work on the neo900 and freemantle to this point.
I do understand unforeseen complications and delays can and do happen ...
Personally ...I would be blissfully content with running other os's....in fact many other os's properly on a much more open and less restricted device with such a form-factor as the neo900 will have.
My curiosity and interest (personally) run in that direction...

@Baronkatz...ahhh! I get what you mean now...it was a bit confusing....my apologies..It appeared like conflicting desires in your post.
.As far as porting (somehow) and/or running both native android and iphone apps in a maemo environment I cannot even guess at the nightmare of conflicts internally that would be involved to get everything to run happily with everything else...currently on the n900 interested people have created/ assembled or ported some programs or ones similar to what is used on ios and android ...for the n900.... they may look and perform the same ...(or close to it) but intrinsically they aren't really the same programs as what is say...natively on those said devices...
alotta work...
not saying it can't be done...but making android and iphone stuff run individually is challenging...
but the difficulty of both android and iphone stuff running side-by-side in a maemo environment...hmm

Do you have any plans concerning the kernel so far?

The way I see it there are two major possibilities:
1. Some stock Debian armel/hf kernel (probably with minimal adjustments for the HW)
2. Your own kernel (probably the same or a similar one that FPTF will use)

A Debian kernel would surely minimize your workload as a HW vendor but will hardly be suitable for an actually useful device (power saving mechanisms leap into mind).
A custom kernel on the other hand would greatly improve the usefulness of Debian on the Neo900 but then someone has to do all the maintenance for this kernel.

The same question basically goes for SHR and its kernel. From what little I've seen I really like the UI.
And whenever I've tried to put something together that I thought might work on a 800x480 touch display it either looked like SHR or Bodhi (but worse since I suck at anything that remotely resembles art).

That being said what I'd really love to see would be Fremantle's hildon-desktop/matchbox on top of a clean Debian userland. Unfortunately what is/was in the Debian repos is nowhere near what Fremantle offers in terms of useability.

The answer is: 2. Development of the kernel is part of what Golden Delicious is doing regarding the development of device itself. FPTF should see some kernel development as well.

Any distro should then be able to use this kernel - including Android/Replicant.

Well, I am thinking about Lilypond (did anybody get it to run under Maemo natively? it is a nifty Debian application), XPaint (it can run on Maemo; but GUI-buttons are tiny), and TeX (it can run on Maemo, as it can be found on TMO). I doubt there is anything similar (free and open-source, at least) on Android or iPhone. Because Maemo can almost directly get apps ported from 'desktop' Debian.
Yes, integration is important.
http://wiki.maemo.org/Apkenv ; though at Official Page http://thp.io/2012/apkenv/ I can only find source code, not built packages for Fremantle. Still, it seems to be easy-to-build.
No idea about 'iOS apps'.
Best regards.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Per aspera ad astra...

apkenv is no way out, 'cause you need to write a separate modules for each app. Chroot would be the best, but no news here, unfortunately: http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=92898

sidenote for progress update (#neo900 quote):
[2014-09-09 Tue 17:17:22] <DocScrutinizer05> on a sidenote: Nik merged UPPER and LOWER into one schematics and one PCB sheet \o/
[2014-09-09 Tue 17:18:00] <DocScrutinizer05> we finally agreed upon using BQ24297 for charging
[2014-09-09 Tue 17:18:35] <DocScrutinizer05> and on GPS we get a proper RF switch to cut GPS antenna from modem when we don't want modem to use GPS
[2014-09-09 Tue 17:19:20] <Pali> is BQ24297 similar to BQ2415x?
[2014-09-09 Tue 17:19:39] <DocScrutinizer05> schematics got cleaned up regarding ground symbols instead of all-wired GND
[2014-09-09 Tue 17:20:12] <DocScrutinizer05> Pali: noooo waaaay! :-D It can detect virtually ALL charger IDs on its own and it works completely autonomously
[2014-09-09 Tue 17:21:10] <DocScrutinizer05> basically it works without *any* sw support, to do whole charging on its own. Though it allows complete control by software nevertheless
[2014-09-09 Tue 17:21:38] <Pali> so we do not need any kernel driver which will do periodic keepalive?
[2014-09-09 Tue 17:21:44] <DocScrutinizer05> no
[2014-09-09 Tue 17:21:58] <DocScrutinizer05> we don't NEED, but we MAY have if we want [edit: including the watchdog function seen in bq24150a]
[2014-09-09 Tue 17:22:05] <DocScrutinizer05> :-D
[2014-09-09 Tue 17:22:11] <Pali> good
[2014-09-09 Tue 17:22:16] <DocScrutinizer05> yeah! :-)))
[2014-09-09 Tue 17:22:56] <DocScrutinizer05> and best of all: bq24297 brings up system unconditionally. No matter if full batt, low batt, no(!) batt
[2014-09-09 Tue 17:23:28] <DocScrutinizer05> \o/
[2014-09-09 Tue 17:24:01] <DocScrutinizer05> it also provides 1000(!) mA VBUS on boost, for hostmode [edit: and hackerbus]
[2014-09-09 Tue 17:24:44] <DocScrutinizer05> it can charge e.g. mugen type batteries with up to >2A
[2014-09-09 Tue 17:25:31] <DocScrutinizer05> a really nice lil critter