using desktop window for BBB console

Just to be clear, I rarely recommend Ubuntu. But in the case of being used as a desktop. Ubuntu in my mind makes more sense than anything else. Debian can run on a desktop system, but that’s not really where Debian shines. For the purpose of getting a Linux “newb” familiar with Linux. Ubuntu will probably be more hassle free for you. Debian tends to do what it does well, but sometimes it can be much higher maintenance. Such as you’re finding out now. But if you install Ubuntu on that second partition / disk, I bet the serial adapter will “just work”. Of course I can not guarantee that, but an FTDI serial device is something all Linuxes should have working, and most will. Debian is a bit different because stability is paramount. So if something is not 100% reliable, it wont make it into the stock kernel. Which is possibly what happened, but maybe not.

Yeah, I was originally running Ubuntu…changed when I started playing with the BBB, as most of the examples used Debian and I figured there might be some advantage to having the same OS on my desktop.

By the way, someone in another forum identified the problem. It turns out that an app brltty was interfering. I uninstalled brltty and now screen works, even though PuTTY doesn’t. Also, ttyUSB0 now shows up in my /dev directory.

Yeah, I was originally running Ubuntu...changed when I started playing
with the BBB, as most of the examples used Debian and I figured there might
be some advantage to having the same OS on my desktop.

So every day usage, they're pretty much the same. It's when you start
getting into the inner workings where they're different. They do also have
different package names for some packages. Typically, I stay away from
Ubuntu because I've had a lot of bad blood with it in the past. e.g. I was
trying ot use it for server related duties in place of Debian, because it
supposedly had reliable drivers for things Debian at the time was not
supporting( new hardware that was released between Debian dev cycles ). In
the end, I wound up moving ot Sabayon, whcih at the time was *the* cutting
edge distro, and it did not support the hardware either . . .

By the way, someone in another forum identified the problem. It turns out
that an app brltty was interfering. I uninstalled brltty and now screen
works, even though PuTTY doesn't. Also, ttyUSB0 now shows up in my /dev
directory.

No way anyone here could have known that. Without physically being at your
system. Maybe not even then.