On 19:37 Fri 14 Sep     , Lionel Bouton wrote:
> Dan Zwell wrote the following on 14.09.2007 12:21 :
> > forgottenwizard wrote:
> >> The reason I mainly suggested Gentoo, btw, is I though LFS would be a
> >> bit much for someone new to Linux. I've always seen Gentoo as a sort of
> >> 'LFS for the lazy'.
> >>
> > Yeah, but even that is too much for most people. We forget that
> > sometimes =). I've had a lot of fun learning difficult things by just
> > not offering myself any alternative (Vim, dvorak, Slickware, Hebrew),
> > but most people don't want to immerse themselves in something new and
> > confusing and flounder until it startes to make sense.
> >
> > Anyway, I think that if the poster wants to use Linux primarily as a
> > vehicle for Ruby/Rails programming, he might not be the type to enjoy
> > (and spend time) learning all its internals.
> >

He could also just grab a Knoppix LiveCD to play with, if he wants to
try to use Linux for ruby deving (if it actually HAS ruby installed).

There is also a distro out there that uses Ruby for most everything it
can, although I forgot the name.

Would be nice to have some feedback from the OP on this, so we have a
better idea on what we're looking for.


> There's one aspect of the OS choice that I don't think was mentionned in
> this thread.
> 
> If you are in the position of being both developper and sysadmin, you'd
> better start learning the technical details. Here Gentoo or *BSD are far
> better than "user-friendly" Linux distributions (at least with Gentoo
> you can't use it witout learning how to manage partitions/LVM volumes,
> how grub is installed, how daemons are started, stopped and configured,
> what maintenance tasks should be done and automated and so can avoid
> shooting yourself in the foot and know what to do in disaster recovery
> situations).
> Even in a company where there are both dedicated sysadmins and
> developpers, the developpers should at least test their software
> (installation and run) on systems similar to the production which
> usually means the ones the sysadmins know the best. No matter how good
> the application code is, if sysadmins can't make it run properly, it's
> utterly useless.
> 
> Even if the question was "What Linux distribution to choose for learning
> Ruby and Ruby on Rails", if the ultimate goal is to put a Rails
> application in production, one should think about system administration...
> 
> Lionel.
> 
> 

Good point, although how far into the internals you want to go will make
a diffrence on choice.