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Hi Michael,

I'm running ArchLinux on my Laptop and I'm very, very, ... , very happy with
it *g*

Probably the best thing about it (and probably a major selling point in your
case)
is that Arch is rolling release, meaning there's no big releases where you
have to
painfully upgrade to the newer big version, and maybe even reinstalling the
whole
system (as you have to with e.g. Ubuntu and consorts). They just upgrade the
packages, and if you run pacman frequently, there are almost no
compatibility problems.

I don't know if the other distros have that... never used any of those.

Also the ArchLinux wiki is so well populated, I have yet to run into a bug
that couldn't
be solved by looking into it ;-)

> [...] What I'm mainly
> looking for is an OS with up to date packages.

Furthermore, Arch is known for it's very up to date packages. You usually
don't have to
wait very long when a new version is released to see it in the package list.
ATM it hosts ruby 1.8.7 2009-06-08 patchlevel 173 -- reasonably current I'd
say.

> [...] I know that I can just compile from source,
> but I'd rather spend my time writing Ruby instead of managing
> packages.

Usually on arch, updating the whole system is a matter of running one
console command.

And Ruby itself as well als RubyGems come as binary packages, meaning you
don't have
to compile them at all.

Of course it takes a little time getting to know the system and setting it
up (it comes without
the X server in standard mode, you have to set that up yourself if you need
it).
But IMO it's worth it.

Greetz
k

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