How to send email updates with beaglebone black?

Question

I am trying to do a (presumably) very simple task. I want my Beaglebone Black (BBB) to send me an email when a button wired to it is pushed.

A) I don't know for sure if I have Angstrom or Debian (or otherwise?) and I don't know how to find out

B) I'm aware of email services include msmtp, ssmtp, exim4, etc from my current efforts on the topic, but I don't know how to download, install, and set them up (or even which one I should use)

C) I'm going to have to figure out how to actually write the logic (syntax, where/how to write the code in the first place, all that jazz)

Background info: I'm currently using Putty as my terminal to talk to the BBB. I've found that I need to connect an ethernet cable directly to the BBB (instead of piggybacking via USB tot he laptop's wireless) to actually get network capability. I do have previous experience with microcontroller coding, but not with operating systems.

I've been working on this for the past few days, but this is my first time getting my hands dirty with a BBB (and Linux, operating systems in general), so most of the tutorials I've been reading aren't very helpful because they assume I know things that I don't (they say "install this package"....but how?). If we could piece together a sort of step-by-step for this whole process, that would vastly help both myself and anyone else trying to do what I'm doing. Thanks much!

The main tutorial I'm following: http://inspire.logicsupply.com/2014/04/alarm1-send-email.html

Some other links I've been using: http://dumb-looks-free.blogspot.com/2014/06/beaglebone-black-bbb-send-mail-via-gmail.html (can't post the rest of the links because my reputation isn't high enough.)

Answer 1

A) cat /etc/issue should answer that
B) This will depend on which distribution you run. (I'd recommend Debian , regardless of what you run right now)
C) That will depend very much on what you use to write that. Note: You can use any Debian tutorial for the email setup part.