I think the angstrom package updater tried to update the kernel. This bricked my BeagleBone. It took several hours to rebuild the image (the hard way), then reinstall the software I want.
Turn’s out the BeagleBone is for early adopters. Buy it, play with it, and don’t upgrade it. The makers next really planned on doing distro updates with any kind of Quality Assurance.
Edit 2015: The BeagleBone Black has better long-term linux support. However, if one really wants stable updates, choose a Raspberry pi.