My apologies if I come across as a n00b. That's probably because I am one. I owned a mobile phone very briefly for about 3 months a few years ago before giving it up completely. I'm actually a closet technophile, but the combination of bad phones, spammers, etiquette-unaware friends and family members, ******ed service providers and my own stubborn philosophies have made me shy away from the damn things.

Until now, that is. (I fancy I sound Jeremy-Clarkson-esque right about now)

I like what I see with the N900 and the fact that it is running Maemo, a linux distribution, FOSS, scratch your itch and all that. But how much of this translates to the phone?

So, my n00b questions:

1. If I don't like Maemo for some reason, can I replace it altogether?
2. Will I be able to do a dist-upgrade or similar once Maemo 6 comes out? No compatibility issues with the phone?
3. How would one go about connecting to the maemo installation on the phone? USB/wifi & then SSH?
4. Will backing up all my configuration settings and phone based data effectively be the equivalent of backing up my home directory?
5. Is there a whitelist application that will only allow calls/sms-es from numbers that are on a whitelist?
6. One of my pet peeves has always been the existence of SMS/texting. I've been told that it's part of the yada-yada specs or some such and that I cannot turn it off - is that right?
7. From what I read, I can install apps from the repository and even add new repositories. How about installing binaries and so on?

Thanks in advance!