Beaglebone Black has Angstrom Linux as default OS inside - and you can ssh your BBB!

Yesterday I purchased an open-source credit card -sized computer Beaglebone Black with no idea what to do next. Today looks different. After reading some documents it turned out there already is an operating system inside Beaglebone Black (=BBB)!

Before wiping out Angstrom Linux (in fact Ångström...) from eMMC memory I wanted to see if it really lives inside BBB as default. Two cables were needed. One black to power up BBB (see picture below) and one grey LAN cable. This way BBB got an IP via D-Link wlan bridge.

I had to take a look at my Motorola cable modem log to see which IP address BBB was using. SSH server is on by default on Angstrom Linux.  Use for example PuTTY (in Windows) to contact BBB: ssh -l root 192.168.0.xx (not telling the last two numbers). Default user is root with *no password*, uh. Maybe it's better that way. It's easy to enter brand new BBB and one can set password right away.

Why SSH? Why command line and no GUI (graphical user interface)? BBB as well as Raspberry Pi are not those everyday PC's but built for other purposes. BBB has it's future in IoT (Internet of Things). Command line and SSH are more than enough for hobbyists.

I guess that's enough for day two. There are newer images available at: http://beagleboard.org/latest-images/ and http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/ which means flashing. Either the new OS has to be flashed on internal eMMC memory (2 GB) or burn on an SD card. The first one I'm not familiar with.

To do: replace D-Link wlan bridge. Find a USB wlan dongle which supports Angstrom Linux.

BBB and my D-Link wlan bridge