N900 i3 and maemo / pmos

Hello guys, I'm new to nokia n900,

Tl;dr

1. Install i3wm in maemo and remove hildon or alongside without using chroot distros. (Ram will be taking hit from this if it's alongside, it is not?)

2. Boot to cli before boot to hildon gui in maemo, is it possible to just use maemo with above case. (Startx or maybe some command to go into the i3wm instead of hildon)

3. How long will this device last in the next few years, degraded and stuff, will this still usable in the near 3 -5 years (it might be won't, but if anyone knows more about this stuff, it might help to relieve this nagging curiousness)

4. This will be secondary device, what project might be good to used with n900?


I just bought one near me and I've also read a few things about n900 as a small terminal device using postmarketos as base. I wanna ask if it's possible in maemo (without migrating to pmos) to use i3wm (tiling window manager) instead of using hildon?

I read that maemo is Debian based and using hildon xorg de on the maemo leste, is it possible to remove it and then go into the command line interface first (like most Linux pre-desktop env. installation)? Or will it be possible to run i3wm alongside hildon without impacting performance?

I know it might be on different os, but I hope if anyone will have little bit explanation for this one, I've read some of the pmos reviews, PowerVR (GPU) isn't supported, or might be it is? I thought the GPU Will help with the processing on the maemo and pmos devices, or maybe it won't?

I'm new to Linux, I've been using arch for a couple of months after tinkering with raspi and laptop, I assume it'll prolly helps with watching videos (YouTube dl and mpv).

Also I thought it might be possible to remove or install alongside i3wm within the root env of the n900 instead of doing other distro chroot to use i3wm (cos I think it'll be lighter if it's using i3wm instead of doubling using chroot inside hildon) I'm not using it as primary device, so maybe I don't really bother with call functionality, it might be good if I still can get 2g or 3g despite of not using it to call at all (telegram-cli can be used instead).

Also a random question, how long will this device last (years/decade?) I'd like to tinker with this device, I know it's been a decade since, so it'll probably will hold on either 3 or 5 year most during it's lifetime? (Since technology will degraded as time goes on) but will it last more than that? (I love this kind of device much).


I'll probably used n900 like this

- using terminal to mostly doing terminal stuff (vim and emacs maybe?)

- fm transmitter, I've seen it's possible on the pmos also to stream musics (using spotdl in conjunction aplay or mpd with ncmpcpp)

- ssh to raspi, or stuff (might want to turn ssh on and off now and then for secs purpose?)

- some kali Linux tools for small stuff (nmap and others without the gui if possible), not all might be compatible, since the limitation of ram of this device.

- mutt for email

- maybe using protonvpn to help with the vpn stuff? Since it won't be possible to browse with better browser, or is there any browser better for this? I'm looking fo ungoogled chromium for sometime now, but haven't installed it anywhere on my device, since I've seen that pmos is compatible with chromium, i think it's still possible to use ungoogled project in this scenario.

- and many more (some other stuff for another day, although it will be limited for device like this)


Also I might be wrong here, is it possible to help with the ram management by using vram? I thought it might helps in cases that ram is overloaded (256mb) even the slightest increase I think it'll help with the ram.

I know most of this is much and far easier on Android and especially there's Geminis Pda and stuff that's already been made, but knowing how expensive it is in my place (Indonesia) it'll prolly out of my reach to get that stuff and the tax also higher, I won't prolly catch up with this new stuff.



Also I'm sorry if my words are confusing, English is not primary language 🙏🏼

Any help appreciated 😁 thank you in advance!