You should probably learn that on linux everything comes in little pieces. For example if you install little program which says it will take only 60Kb, in reality it might install 50 mb of different librarys and packages (dependencies) because you didnt have those. these are shared between programs. It's not windows where you install single binary.” (Slender) Since i've got the N900, i realised how much I had learned about Maemo and even Linux.

In some cases you came across nice applications until you realize that you cannot install it in the classical way (trough the Application Manager) even if it was possible before the PR1.1 firmware update with the help of the Red Pill Mode...

Files of those applications are generally a .deb package (short for Debian format used by Maemo) .deb packages are roughly analogous to OS X's .pkg or Windows' .exe/.msi installers .debs are how almost all packages are delivered, but you usually don't deal with them directly, except when installing locally. Some packages are simply not distributed through repositories, or offered separately as .debs (which you may prefer for whatever reason).

You can install .debs by opening local copies with Application manager. The major disadvantage to installing .debs locally as opposed to installing from a repository is that you wont be automatically notified of updates to the package. Also dependency installation is not automatic.

Anyway, we'll see together how to install .deb package on the N900 in a few steps as always, and enjoy some pre-releases games and applications !

1- Download the .deb file and save it (in the default location it'll be easy for the next steps)

2- Download and install rootsh (available in Extras repository) as rootsh is the simplest option, and does not require a desktop computer or running additional services, it is the recommended method for gaining root access

3 - Then, from the X Terminal, type sudo gainroot (or root for short, the difference is that "root" places you in /root instead of /home/user personally, i use sudo gainroot command line).




3- In X Terminal look into the directory where the file was saved, for this tutorial, we have it in MyDocs, so you can simply type cd MyDocs


You can check if the file is in the directory by typing ls command line :



4 - Now, we can install the .deb file using the command dpkg -i NameOfTheFile.deb (In this tutorial : mstatus-applet_0.3_armel.deb for mstatus applet) then enter



You're done !


Any questions? Stay tuned for the part 2 !

Sources : http://wiki.maemo.org/Installing_applications, http://wiki.maemo.org/Root_access, http://linuxreviews.org/man/dpkg/ and thenokiablog