Only some stupid person would do it! (Not saying you are stupid... But if you do it, you actually are)
It's like the other tricks I don't like... Running Windows and Mac and Android... Well, Android is at least a bit better than the other two!

But seriously, what are you thinking about? You've bought a device, with maybe the best OS in the world on it (Yes, the best! Because Maemo is Debian-based)... Don't you think it's a bit funny to get rid of it and install Symbian?

This was as much as I could help... I dunno any way for doing that, but I'm sure it's possible, as N900 can do anything!

Dual boot, no thanks.
Virtual machine running on top of M*o, yes thanks.

The best OS... ok,but what if you want THAT app that is not available for the "best OS"? There are 4 main approaches there: port it (must be open source for that, or whoever makes it do the port), create another with the functionality you need from the first one, have an emulator for the OS that runs it (i.e. the Palm OS emulator), or have the other OS in double boot (works for Android apps in good part).

That we are able to have samples of the 4 approachs is something that speaks very well for the N900. Having the possibility of installing Symbian (^3, ^4, or older ones) in emulated or double-boot way only enrichs the platform and broadens the amount of available apps.

Anyway, one thing is wishful thinking and another doing the hard work.

Personally I wouldn't mind having Symbian^3 as an alternative. It adds to the wow factor of course. I am currently dual-booting android and maemo. I use Maemo all the time. It is superior to Android in nearly all ways (in my opinion). At this point I only boot Android for games, and go back to Maemo for anything else.

In my opinion Maemo is superior to iOS, Android, Symbian, Windows Mobile, BB OS and Palm OS. But would I like to triple-quadruple-whatever boot all of them? Would I like the possibility to use different OSes and interfaces without having to pay anything? Yes I would. I don't think I dont't think I would ever consider switching completely from Maemo. But it wouldn't hurt to have the liberty of using other OSes. I say port anything you can. It only adds to possibilites, not reduces existing ones.

Exactly, there's nothing wrong in having one more os in the list! If someone don't want it its fine, he/she don't even need to check this topic or related stuffs but lot will, at least, try it play with it. If somebody think he/she can port it and want to try then why to stop, but if there's no one who can or want to then ok, we'll leave it for later. I am sure, 50 million dollar competition for n8 will definately flood n8 with superb quality apps (and games) and if similar contest would have been held for n900, we could have got the best of the best of the best apps than any other platform got because of the power of os and hardware. And we won't have to wait to see some useful app that we had on our previous platform and then porting android, ubuntu, maemo, symbian and emulating palm wouldn't have been of much interest as is today. But as someone said, app roles device and if we don't have much choices of apps, virtually the power of maemo and the hardware is kind of waste. When someone asks for game then one will answer to get emulators but almost all smartphone platform got those emulators and yet we need it due to jacke of native games. Now see we are porting 8bit game emulator but not symbian?

Bottomline is there's a sticky topic ".... We need more apps....". It explains all, it is the reason.

don't know abot open enough or not but good enough, so many apps that my network provider has on symbian that can be used on maemo (android though)

best OS but not good enough to use, some kids may get kick out of it wrtting their own code but for how long, bring on symbian to n900 and prove the point that n900 is the best, runs all os.

also, thinking buying the best car useless if there are no roads to drive on.

but it feels good to have the fastest twin turbo car on the roads.
i know nokia did cut our road, but the maemo5 tweakers here got us the best road we can ever have.
yes bringing symbian to the n900 is what needed to prove that its the best mate.

whew! Chill guys... This is the alternatives forum what topics would we expect here? 'how to dual boot maemo and maemo?' @.@ its just normal for people to ask here for other OS cause they want an alternative not replacement OS

From a poor hobby developer point of view the ability to dual-boot Maemo/Meego/Symbian/Android would be awesome. No need to get multiple hundreds of € devices when you could do all testing on one device.

Perhaps using the N900 qemu emulator that is used for Meego work, a Symbian hacker would probably get it up and running fairly quickly, as symbian can already be run on the beagleboard.