Hello folks, I got my N800 about 3 weeks ago but haven't had the time to play around with it much.

I must qualify that this is my first tablet, my first experience with Linux, and I have absolutely no programming experience.

In the last 3 weeks, I did occasionally surf this forum and have come to the conclusion that this is a good place to start and learn stuff about the N800. However, I am stumped and somewhat intimidated at the number of applications and tweaks that require some form of Linux or programming knowledge. Please correct me if I am wrong about this point ...

I am wondering hence, if there is a one-stop shop - a site, a book etc where I can at least pick up the basics of using my tablet in a more powerful way, and using Linux etc to get all these things done.

I am sure that if I hang around this wonderful site long enough, I will learn much. After all, in most forums and fansites you get more out of the site the more you invest time in it. But I hope to be able to get a good kick start say once I have invested about 3 hours to learn.

Could someone show me the way on where I can get started? For this, I will be most grateful. Thanks!

Hi,

This might be a good place to start:
http://tabletschool.blogspot.com/sea...ting%20started

And you'll be pleased to know you are wrong, many applications run perfect with no tweaking required.. it all depends what you want to use it for.

Also whilst you are correct in that this is a great site for info there are several other great sites about, youtube videos, which should give you all you need to get going.

Enjoy.

Half the fun of getting the N800 is learning how to use it. By buying one you are already on the path to learning a few Linux basics.

One thing you could try is this (it worked for me!)

Download yourself a copy of Ubuntu (www.ubuntu.com) burn it to a CD and run it live (ie you don't actually need to install anything to your computer) or better still, install it on your machine.

Then get a copy of Beginning Ubuntu Linux by Keir Thomas from Amazon, and have a play. The stuff about the command line and the Linux file system is well explained. The more you read and play the more familiar you will become, and when you switch on your N800 and read here (or elsewhere) various tricks you can do from the command line, they will all suddenly make sense, because Ubuntu is similar in many ways to what the N800 runs.

The book is handy as it also explains lots of the works and files that are mentioned in these forums.

I guess this is not the cheapest method, as there plenty of free Linux tutorial web sites, but if you take a look at the book and do some experimenting you'll learn alot and be up and runing in a few days.

Good luck!

You can install many, many programs and never use linux. for the more complicated ones, sometimes you can just type a few times into xterm to set something up or run a progran this way, and you still don't need to learn much linux (and no programming).
Of course there is advance stuff out there and then you can do a lot more, but I have had my nokia tablet for six months and have had to type about a total of 5 minutes in xterm using linux. everything else was just installing through the GUI.

Amadeus: If you're interested in Linux, that's awesome, but you don't necessarily have to know much about it to force your tablet to do your bidding. Most of the instructions out there are simple step by step lists. (Some can be pretty cryptic and assume you're a Unix sysadmin but most are pretty good about explaining things.) If you check out some of Penguinbait's posts here, he does a really good job of writing instructions that practically anyone can follow (and when you step back and look at the end result, it's a lot of complicated stuff.)

Anyway. If you're feeling adventurous, give Ubuntu a shot like mfresh recommended. http://ubuntuforums.org/ has insane community support. Every problem I've ever run into has already been posted and answered.