The Beagleboard is indeed very powerful, but to be able to really harness all of that power you need to run a proper operating system on top of it. With a Linux system running on the board, you can do most things you ever dreamed of doing on a piece of hardware that takes up just a fraction of the space required for a standard PC.
Getting a Linux system up and running is quite easy. There are all kinds of images available all over the Internet which will get you started. At some point though, if you are like me, you will likely want to set up your own Linux system from scratch so you know exactly what is running on your board. The first thing you need is a Linux kernel, and in this article I will try to teach you how to build your own.
