Robert Dober wrote:
> On 8/12/07, Alex Young <alex / blackkettle.org> wrote:
>> Robert Dober wrote:
>>> On 8/12/07, Alex Young <alex / blackkettle.org> wrote:
>>>> joviyach wrote:
>>>>> Developing using things like MySQL, PHP, and Ruby has been an absolute
>>>>> nightmare on my Windows XP environment. I was wondering if Ubuntu, or
>>>>> some other flavour of Linux would be much better? I like what I have
>>>>> seen from Ubuntu, so far, but wonder how "RoR friendly" it is?
>>>>>
>>>>> <RANT>With Windows, I seem to spend more time trying to make the
>>>>> development environment actually work, than doing any development.
>>>>> It's really quite aggravating.</RANT>
>>>> Ubuntu's great, as long as you're aware of the gotchas (which pretty
>>>> much amount to "remember to install all the -dev packages and all the
>>>> parts that Ruby was split into").
>>> That is because Ubuntu is not made for development platforms, so my
>>> first answer would be, look somewhere else, Debian unstable (which
>>> means stable of course, that is just Debian jargon),
>> Debian makes the same choice.  Unless that's changed in unstable, of
>> course...
> 
> Hmm hopefully that is not OT, but if one choses Debian, unstable is a
> must, I feel.
> So you are right Alex if you opt for stable, but really that is a crazy choice.
Hardly.  I've still got sarge boxes that I'm deploying to, and I'm 
happily developing on etch day-to-day.  Which features (or fixed bugs) 
have changed since the distro's release?  That's the only relevant 
question, really...

> I just came up with a little File Server app we need for file sharing,
> (thx to the list and Pit Capitain in particular). I deployed it on
> Gentoo with no pain at all.
> Than I wanted it to share with a different dept, they use Debian
> stable, no way to get a decent Ruby version to run let alone with
> openssl...
Etch has 1.8.4 out of the box.  That's really not that bad, thread bugs 
notwithstanding.  I've yet to run into anything that I need which 
*requires* 1.8.5, although it sounds like your experience is different. 
  I have in the past used backports when it was essential to get >1.8.2 
onto a sarge box, but only because that was quicker than ripping 
everything out and building from source.

> So right now I am lobbying for Debian unstable in that dept. to get my
> Ruby foot into the door ....
> 
> With Debian stable it is virtually impossible to get up to date
> versions and security fixes, just forget it.
If you're really worried about getting the latest and greatest onto a 
Debian box, there's always checkinstall.

-- 
Alex