Hi and welcome Feathers McGraw!

As Copernicus suggested, you should read that thread; and every thread in connection with your question. Search through this site, or google.

Second, I would suggest you to decide what you want to use your device for. There are tons of applications so you have to find those that fit your needs. I recommend reading first, install after that.

You can install easy debian, easy ubuntu if you would like to expand the boundaries (overclocking is strongly recommended to this, so be careful).

You can make a pentest device.

You can use it for drawing.

Etc. It is up to you.

For me, if I face something that I would do with my device, I almost always find a solution for that. And there are things/solutions that I even cannot imagine that can be done, but since it is open source... there are no boundaries

Oh, and one more thing: if you would like to use n900 on a daily basis and do "geeky" things, you should love Linux rather than hate...

Cheers,

jm