I have a beagleboard rev C.4, i got it for pretty much the same reason as you. First i ran Angstrom on it, then tried Ubuntu. Ubuntu took forever to boot and never really settled to a usable state where i could tinker with it. But it was quite a bit of fun messing with a serial terminal and figuring out how get it to run at 700mhz.
I haven't messed with it in months (work and other crap), but i hope to do something useful with it at some point.:lol:
http://www.elinux.org/BeagleBoard got me up and running pretty quick, although i don't see much about the xM there.
Good Luck
