I've been trying to figure this out myself, but I'll tell you what
little I know....
At this point, there are a lot of kernel modules that aren't yet
available for the Beaglebone. New ones are becoming available over
time, so I think the problem is primarily a backlog of development
work to be done. More advanced users have been generating kernel
modules from source on their own, but I'm not at all familiar with
that process.
The missing python package appears to be a case where a package that
was available for previous Angstrom version, 2011.03, isn't (yet)
available for the current version, 2012.01. You can tell what
versions a package is available by looking at the Package Browser web
page, in this case http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/repo/?pkgname=python-pyftpdlib.
(Incidentally, the latest Beagleboard images are 2012.01 -- the python
package is unavailable on those Beagleboard images too, so in this
case it isn't just a Beaglebone thing.)
I don't know whether its possible to point opkg at the 2011.03
repositories. I suspect this is generally not advisable, since a lot
has changed in the core set of packages (connmgr, systemd, etc.), but
that's purely a guess on my part. For Python libraries, it is usually
possible to install them without using opkg, either by running
easy_install (from python-setuptools) or by downloading the Python
source and following the installation instructions.
It make sense, it maybe just a matter of time then for kernel
modules,
and good to know that there is a work around for installing other
python
missing modules.
How do I know which version am I running?
If I do:
# uname -a
Linux beaglebone 3.1.0+ #1 Tue Nov 15 15:51:15 CET 2011 armv7l GNU/
Linux
The only place on the beaglebone that I've noticed the version #
displayed is in the serial (i.e. USB-connected) console. On mine, it
displays "Angstrom v2012.01-core - Kernel 3.1.0+" above the login
prompt.
I'm running the "2012.01.27" demo image downloaded from the web site.
To confuse things further, I think the Angstrom image that was
included in the box was an in-between version, 2011.11 or something
like that, but in terms of opkg compatibility it is close (maybe
identical) to 2012.01.