# Best Linux distibution for ruby on rails developement? **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [March 31, 2006, 2:10pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/best-linux-distibution-for-ruby-on-rails-developement/56465 "2006-03-31T14:10:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![janmartin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/848f3c/32.png) [@janmartin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/janmartin)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2006, 2:10pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/best-linux-distibution-for-ruby-on-rails-developement/56465/1 "2006-03-31T14:10:48Z")
Hi, I am on Kanotix linux since the first distribution was released by Kano. However I am tired of the “if it can go wrong it will go wrong on Kanotix” pattern. Please recommend a distribution that by your experience is best for ruby on rails development and need no hour-long tweacks for even “simple” tasks. Thanks, Jan Martin ---
**Author:** ![janmartin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/848f3c/32.png) [@janmartin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/janmartin)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2006, 2:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/best-linux-distibution-for-ruby-on-rails-developement/56465/2 "2006-03-31T14:26:10Z")
Jan Martin wrote: > Thanks, > Jan Martin You should find the thread “Poll: Which distro do you use for Rails/Ruby development?”, which started on 29th March, useful. regards Justin ---
**Author:** ![janmartin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/848f3c/32.png) [@janmartin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/janmartin)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2006, 7:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/best-linux-distibution-for-ruby-on-rails-developement/56465/3 "2006-03-31T19:02:26Z")
Hi - can’t really answer your question, but one point to watch out for is that Rails 1.1 seems to prefer Ruby 1.8.4. Ubuntu, which I would otherwise recommend as an excellent distribution, currently has 1.8.3. Having said that, I currently use Kubuntu and Mandrake 2005 (yep, ancient I know!) and both work fine with Rails 1.0 It’s been a while since I set up the environments, but I remember both being pretty painless, so long as you stick the the dictum that you should NOT waste time trying to get Apache and Rails playing together nicely on your development box. Use Webrick or Lighttpd via the script/server script. Robert ---
**Author:** ![janmartin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/848f3c/32.png) [@janmartin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/janmartin)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2006, 2:06am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/best-linux-distibution-for-ruby-on-rails-developement/56465/4 "2006-04-01T02:06:54Z")
> I am on Kanotix linux since the first distribution was released by Kano. > However I am tired of the “if it can go wrong it will go wrong on > Kanotix” pattern. yeah if YaST doesnt do something right on SuSE, good luck… or if the package you want isnt in debian/ubuntu, youre in LinuxFromScratch territory… > Please recommend a distribution that by your experience is best for ruby > on rails development and need no hour-long tweacks for even “simple” > tasks. ironically i’d say gentoo is the best here. since tweakers use it, the default configuration is the most pain-free and working around. i think tweakers also use arch-linux, although i havent tried that since it is primarily binary-based and ix86 only last i looked… its going to be a bit weird on any of them, in that you’ll likely get a hodge podge of stuff installed via gems, installed via the OS package system, and installed via SVN/tarballs/etc. Gentoo mitigates this a bit by using portage as a frontend which just calls gems for most things, but with the added bonus of it being tracked alongside eveyrthing else youve installed…it similarly integrates well with CPAN… ---
**Author:** ![janmartin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/848f3c/32.png) [@janmartin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/janmartin)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2006, 6:09pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/best-linux-distibution-for-ruby-on-rails-developement/56465/5 "2006-04-01T18:09:38Z")
On Sat, Apr 01, 2006 at 02:06:54AM +0200, carmen wrote: } \> I am on Kanotix linux since the first distribution was released by Kano. } \> However I am tired of the “if it can go wrong it will go wrong on } \> Kanotix” pattern. } } yeah if YaST doesnt do something right on SuSE, good luck… or if the } package you want isnt in debian/ubuntu, youre in LinuxFromScratch } territory… […] I take issue with that. If you want a package that isn’t among the thousands available for Debian, you can generally download the tarball and configure --prefix=/usr/local; make; make install If it is a matter of version (e.g. the version you need is in unstable, but you are using stable), you can almost always download the unstable source package and build it with dpkg-buildpackage to generate an installable .deb for your system. I use Debian as my development and deployment platform for Ruby (both Rails and otherwise, with the exception of a script that works on iPhoto albums and, therefore, is most useful under MacOS X). I am running mostly testing (etch) with a bit of unstable (sid). I had no trouble installing Ruby 1.8, or the associated rdoc, ri, and irb. Installing the native PostgreSQL Ruby library was an apt-get install, as was RMagick. Due to bugs in the gem install, I had to fight with it a bit since I wanted it in /usr/local instead of /usr, but I would have had a working gems installation if I had done a normal install. (There is also work being done to wrap gems with Debian packages, but I’m not sure how far it’s gotten.) Once I had gems, installing Rails was a snap. All in all, it was very easy. On this list (and ruby-talk), in the last several month I’ve seen messages asking for help in installing Ruby, Rails, RMagick, etc. on Windows, MacOS X, SuSE, Fedora Core 4 (and maybe other versions), and Redhat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). I also remember people needing help with installing Ruby 1.8.4 on K/Ubuntu and being told that Dapper Drake would have it. I have not seen any messages seeking installation help on Debian, and it isn’t because it isn’t used. (The same can probably be said of Gentoo.) Note that I have seen people needing help with Rails deployment on Debian. I had great success with apache2 and mod\_fcgid (both installed via apt-get), and it only involved a little tweaking of dispatch.fcgi and my apache2 configs. –Greg ---
**Author:** ![janmartin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/848f3c/32.png) [@janmartin](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/janmartin)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2006, 3:17pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/best-linux-distibution-for-ruby-on-rails-developement/56465/6 "2006-04-01T15:17:33Z")
On 3/31/06, Robert J. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Hi - can’t really answer your question, but one point to watch out for is > that Rails 1.1 seems to prefer Ruby 1.8.4. Ubuntu, which I would > otherwise > recommend as an excellent distribution, currently has 1.8.3. > > “Dapper Drake”, the newest version of Ubuntu (still in beta), does include > 1.8.4, as well as lighttpd. More details here: > [QATeam - Ubuntu Wiki](http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/flight5) That said, I’m using OpenSuSE, and it works fine. Granted, this is for development and not production. It uses 1.8.2, but I’ve not run into any issues with 1.1. The only other thing I’ve run into is having t recompile the source rpm for lighttpd, but that took all of 5 minutes.