From: Marc Heiler Date: 2009-07-08T07:31:19+09:00 Subject: Re: Best OS packages for Ruby? > I know that I can just compile from source, but I'd rather spend > my time writing Ruby instead of managing packages. I've > installed software from source before, and it can be a pain. ;) Try an approach like GoboLinux. Basically everything goes into one dir - ruby would reside under /Programs/Ruby/Version i.e. /Programs/Ruby/1.9.1, Glibc would reside under /Programs/Glibc/2.10.1 and so on and so forth. For an older glibc version it would be i.e. /Programs/Glibc/2.6 and a symlink would point at which version is the one which should be used currently. This model works much better because when you want to switch versions, you just switch symlinks (if you installed that program already, else you just download the binary via a script and have it setup to be your main version) Also, if you want to get rid of something, you just kill the directory. With that being said though, GoboLinux is too small so I dont recommend it. Big distributions like Ubuntu have one huge advantage - NUMBERS. Numbers of users, developers and so forth. There is too much proliferation of distributions without any real gain. > I have run almost all of these operating systems at one point or > another (in college I used to experiment with them), but I'm not > familiar with the latest versions of each But then you already must invest time. :> The most obvious solution would be to use the one which gives you the least amount of problems. Now, I believe the GoboLinux model is better than the FHS one, but if _I_ have to pick a distribution which I can recommend to smart people, then I will pick Archlinux. If you want the numbers, then use Ubuntu. Dont do it like me though, because else you would end up with a system that is much closer to Linux from Scratch, with an always-unfinished package manager in ruby, which lacks features pacman (Archlinux) or apt-get (Ubuntu) has - stick to a distribution! ;) -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.