If Maemo ever becomes popular enough people will claim it's for "Newbies." That's just the way it works in this community, people try and find a reason to try and do/be something different. If that weren't the case, then they probably wouldn't be here. Besides, the newbies are really the answer to the problem. Linux needs these people: Companies like Sound Blaster aren't going to waste their time writing and releasing drivers for their hardware for linux until they're convinced that there is a substantial market. So, it's the people that generally don't have a clue about how windows works, that try out linux and expect it to "just work" that will complain in enough numbers to get results.

To the OP: you could try looking for answers to the fix in almost any linux forum for x86 because the answer will likely be transposable to ubuntu.