Will somebody please explain how I can install Python on an N900? I don't need to be told what Python is (I've been programming in it for a living for 10 years). But I know nothing much about Maemo, or debian, or portable computing.

I've found a Qt download on Ovi, but it obviously won't work if I don't have Python. If I search for Python on Ovi, Nokia, or Maemo, the best I get is political discussion.

Please don't say, Google for it, or Look at the website. I've been searching for a week. I did find one alleged installer, but the Maemo's debian package manager declared it invalid with a message like "to be considered compatible the install must have section x with attribute y". Since that message is intended for the install author, the flaw is clearly fundamental: syntactic, rather than something about the environment I am trying to install it in.

I've obviously been looking in the wrong places, but will someone please explain where the right places are? And maybe take some pity on those who don't know where they are already?

You can either do it by hand in a terminal (you will need root):

Or, the easier way, is to an install an app that requires it from the default Application Manager. Something like PyQt4 will give you Python+QT4 wrappers. AFAIK, however, nothing from OVI should require python. They don't even allow python-related apps into the Ovi Store last I heard...

Did you try:
sudo apt-get install python2.5

um.. am i missing something here? im pretty sure python is already loaded out of the box.

Very likely. But it's used in so many apps now it's hard to tell as half the apps in HAM would pull it as a dependency anyway.

You don't need to do anything complicated, just go to the application manager and install the PyQt Demo package. It will transparently install Python, Qt and the bindings themselves, accompanied by a few cool runnable demos.

It's not. In most linux distros it is, but in the smaller ones (puppy, dsl, maemo 5)) it isn't.

As for the 'sudo apt-get install' suggestion, that won't work either, because sudo is not set up 'properly' on the n900. This will work though:
Of course, to do it that way, you'll have to have rootsh from HAM installed. Alternatively, as suggested above, download PyQt (or PySide) and it will automatically pull in python.