From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>
Date: 2007-09-10T07:08:38+09:00
Subject: Re: What Linux distribution to choose for learning Ruby and Ruby on Rails

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Slavo Furman wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> I apologize forward for somewhat dumb question...
> 
> I am just another programmer whose (relatively successful) ASP.NET career
> was somewhat disrupted by encountering Ruby/Ruby on Rails few months ago. So
> far I learned and used Ruby just on Windows, but now I decided o give it try
> also on Linux.
> 
> So, what Linux distribution would you recommend for programmer who have
> master degree in CS, 10+ years experience as achitect/programmer on Windows
> (C++, C#, ASP.NET, MS SQL Server), good understanding of system programming
> concepts, but no Linux experience? I look forward to using Linux mainly for
> learning more Ruby and Ruby on Rails programming.
> 
> thanks in advance!
> slavo.
> 

Lots of questions:

1. Have you considered staying on Windows and installing "Instant Rails"
there?

2. Have you considered installing the jRuby platform on Windows and
using that?

3. What do you want to learn about Linux? Linux is a pretty broad area.
Do you want to learn how to "develop web applications" using the
"native" Linux tools plus Ruby on Rails? Do you want to learn how to
administer a Linux-based web application/Ruby on Rails server?

There are three main branches of Linux, plus a fourth less-well-known
branch that happens to be the one I use. :) The main branches are Red
Hat Enterprise, SuSE (Novell) Enterprise, and Debian. Red Hat has an
associated community distro called Fedora and a number of binary
re-builds like CentOS and Scientific Linux. SuSE Enterprise has an
associated community distro called OpenSuSE. And Debian has an
associated sort-of-half commercial distro called Ubuntu.

All of them support the major open-source web servers and relational
databases. The "community" distros tend to have newer, less stable
packages than the "enterprise" distros, so if you want to focus on
learning Ruby and Rails, I'd recommend a community distro at a "testing"
level.

Those would be Fedora, OpenSuSE and Debian "testing", aka "Lenny". I'd
stay away from Ubuntu -- I know people who swear by it and people who
swear *at* it, but it's really a half-breed. It's neither stable nor
testing, neither commercial nor community, and it's not nearly as
"user-friendly" as it looks at first glance.
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