Does the OS make a significant difference for Ruby Development ?

Question

Hi,

I have been working in Java for the past 4 years and I am currently switching over to Ruby. I am so excited about it and I feel good to finally get a hands on experience on a scripting language first time. The task assigned to me is to first pick a OS of my choice and setup a Ruby in it and study for 2 weeks. I have been developing applications in windows and Linux is not my cup of tea. Some part of me wants to try out Linux but I want to first convince myself whether OS really matters for Ruby development.

If Linux does matter, which distribution can I start looking at?

Please advise.

Answer 1

You can develop Ruby on all major platforms. I've done it on Windows, OSX, and Linux without any issue.

Answer 2

I do like Unix based OS'es but Ruby runs as well on Windows as on Linux I would say. Just get your favourite editor in your favourite OS a go

If you do want to try Linux, Ubuntu is easy to setup and a popular one

Answer 3

I tend to prefer Unixy OSes as well (Linux, OS X) if for no other reason than the terminal/command line is just so drastically better in them, and for things like Ruby where you may have to do a fair bit of command-line stuff it's a great help not to have to deal with the subpar command-line interface options on Windows (Cygwin can be a pain and Powershell is not my taste).

But as far as capabilities go, you should be fine with whatever you choose.

Answer 4

if on windows you might want to use jruby--might be faster

Answer 5

I prefer Unix OSes and I use RVM to maintain my Ruby environment. It's very helpful.

http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/

If you're stuck on Windows, JRuby is your best bet.