I'm fairly new to my N900, but the main reason I got mine, I'm sure like many others, was the amount of freedom with the phone.

I'm very impressed by what people have managed to do OS wise just because the wanted to try, running win 3.1 etc and recently, porting android to the phone, and i think I remember reading of open pandora too? I may be wrong.

But one thing surprises me, that I've never seen anything of windows mobile being hacked onto the phone, especially considering the similar hardware platform.
Is there any reason for this not being ported? Or purely a case of no-ones tried? If there are hardware reasons, please tell me, I'm quite intrigued, I'd have a try myself if I had any idea where to start and wasn't likely to brick my phone

It's definitely possible, but I couldn't tell where to start or how it'd be done. Would be great to turn the N900 into an HD2 with a smaller screen.

It might be that the people who are capable of doing this bought their N900 because it ran an open source OS, and don't care to try to get a closed one like Windows Mobile running on it. And if anyone did, it wouldn't be legal to distribute because of copyright, so why bother.

I understand about the fact of wanting an open source OS, I'm completely happy with maemo, works perfectly well for me.

My question relates to the "just for the sake of it" side of things, like win 3.1, 95, OSX? and the like, I understand that none of those were running legally, but it was interesting and impressive to see what people and the device can do. I can imagine it wouldnt be wonderfully functional due to lack of certain drivers etc. But even if it were just for bragging rights, it still surprises me not to find any hint of an attempt.

I'd still love to have a crack at it myself, but it's comforting to know I'm not the only one who wouldn't have a clue how to start. I still worry about bricking my phone when i have to install something via terminal

3.1, 95 and OSX were all ran under emulation, not difficult to do, so not really much of an achievement.

You want Window Mobile to run natively on the N900? That would take a LOT more effort to do than the examples you gave, possibly too much effort to do just for bragging rights.

I know they were essentially run as VM, obviously x86 code cant run natively on ARM architecture without first being ported, and without the source code or very significant reverse engineering thats not going to happen, I was using those as examples of just doing things because they can.

Android however has been ported, which obviously I understand is a more simple task because of the freely available source, but it still had to be ported, and to most people, probably more as a show of what can be done, I've had an android phone and would not go back from maemo, I can imagine many would not.

And with my basic understanding of winmo, it requires an "sbl" whatever one of those is, to boot or install, but considering that winmo has been installed on unintended devices, and different versions on devices etc, some form of work around must have been made, so I would imagine to an extent some steps would already have been made?

I'm the first to admit I would be unable to do it, but as far as my understanding goes it would be quite feasible, and am basically just saying it kind of surprised me.

porting without having its source codes???

It would be both illegal and immoral. Most of us came here to bury windows not to resurrect it.

Actually most of us came here for a linux phone, not to get rid of Windows Mobile. I haven't personally owned a WM device actually. Blackberries, A few NSeries and XpressMusics, etc etc.

I do agree, I dislike MS system as well. However - there are useful applications available only for Windows Mobile. For example my problem - a nice app for home automation (control of heat, light, alarm, etc...) - was developed for only for WM. I love my N900, but I would love it even more if I could use it control my home stuff...