I've been trying and trying to install maemo 5 applications on my N900 for days now. I'm sure these questions have been answer before, but trust me I have tried searching this forum and been googling for days, so please do not shoot me. First I'm very expienced with computers.....OK I'm experienced with WINDOWS, NOT LINUX(never had any need to use it).

So when I got my N900 I didn't take any kind of internet connection service from my service provider, so I can't use my application manager to download and easily install applications. I have use x-terminal, but since I don't know anything about Linux commands and such I'm **bleep**.

So I download few applications(in .deb format) from meamo repository(Fremantle Extras free armel) and transfered them to my phone.

I placed them in my /home/user/dokumentit/soft/ directory and I can see them with file manager so I know they are there. Oh and I renamed the .deb files into shorter ones so typing is not so annoying(And yes I kept the .deb extension, no I'm not that stupid to delete extension)

So this is the command I use, which I found searching this forum:

~ $ sudo dpkg -i /home/user/dokumentit/soft/alienblaster.deb

and next the x-terminal asks for password

Password:

And there is a black block/cursor where to type in the password, but when I push my keys on my N900 nothing appears on the screen. OK this might be a trick to hide my password from other people around me I understand that, or not, is this normal? I searched this forum for the default password as I haven't changed it and it's supposed to be 'rootme' (afcourse without the ' ). But even thou I type it in and press enter the next thing I get is

Sorry, try again.

So please help me and step-by-step instructions thank you.

P.S And yes I have read every beginner instructions this site provides.

if you haven't got any internet connection packages from your provider - it will be a lot easier to use wi-fi connection to you router at home and then application manager to download whatever you need

i'm still a bit of a noob myself but from what i gather the sudo command isn't quite the same on maemo as other linux distro's. the way usually reccomended is to download rootsh (from the catalogues) and then use the "sudo gainroot" command. so have you access to wifi anywhere you could use to get rootsh installed at least?

install rootsh from app manager. (you WILL need an internet connection)
open xterm
type 'sudo gainroot' (without quotes)
then type dpkg -i <whatever>

the behaviour you describe is normal. There is no root password by default because that would potentially leave the phone wide open to attack.

Okay, you can't use sudo in this way on the N900.

By default, your x-terminal session is run by the "user" user account. If you want to sudo any commands, the user account would have to have an entry in the /etc/sudoers file.

And if you did, then you would still be prompted for a password when trying to execute the sudo command, but this would be expecting the user account's login password.

The user account has no password on it by default, so you have nothing to input, and even if you did it would still report that the user account is not in the sudoers file.

To get around this, as has been stated before, you would need to install the rootsh application and then issue the sudo gainroot command in x-terminal prior to running priviledged commands.

no need to.
all the app manager needs, is a working inet connection.

use either, as pointed out already, wifi oder connect the n900 via usb with your computer (connected to the inet of course).
the n900 will ask you whether to use the n900 in storage mode (like an usb stick) or pc suite mode. you want pc suite mode.

afterwards it's up to your windows computer to make sure forwarding works (firewall and stuff).
but how to forward an inet connection to another device in windows should be explained at a lot of places already (i know nothing about it since i never use windows)

Thank guys for the help......didn't even consider that N900 could use Wi-Fi.....need start think that this phone is more like a computer than a phone

Just an FYI, the x-terminal has a virtual tab key which can be used for auto completion. So there is no need to rename long files. The terminal is smart enough to recognized the file name in the directory your telling it to execute the command. I use this all the time, so much faster.

Just start typing the name of the file then after the first few letters press tab. Works for almost everything you do in xterm.

Have fun with the phone. It's awesome!