"joviyach" <joviyach / gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:1186927956.576751.210850 / i13g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
> 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>
>
> Any advice appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jim
>

If you are willing to try persevering with Windows one more time before 
jumping to Linux or OS/X then have a look at Instant Rails 
(http://instantrails.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?HomePage).  Here is a quote 
from the website:

"Instant Rails is a one-stop Rails runtime solution containing Ruby, Rails, 
Apache, and MySQL, all preconfigured and ready to run. No installer, you 
simply drop it into the directory of your choice and run it. It does not 
modify your system environment."

Ian