I previously gave instructions for installing the Ruby on Rails environment in Ubuntu.

I am mildly annoyed with Ubuntu 11.10. It is apparently not possible to create a desktop Launcher with the Ubuntu UI. One can create a Launcher, which is more-or-less equivalent to a Windows desktop shortcut, with a shell command. But it seems to me that such a basic activity should be supported by the built-in UI, as it was in previous versions of Ubuntu.

For this reason I tried Linux Mint 11, and I am very pleased with it as an environment to do simple Ruby on Rails development.

Here are my instructions for installing the Ruby on Rails environment on Linux Mint 11, running in VirtualBox:

# Install Linux Mint 11
# Install Guest Extensions

# open terminal

sudo apt-get install curl git-core build-essential bison openssl libreadline5 libreadline5-dev zlib1g zlib1g-dev libssl-dev libsqlite3-0 libsqlite3-dev sqlite3 libxml2-dev autoconf nodejs

# The following is based on http://phpfour.com/blog/2011/06/painless-ruby-and-rails-installation-on-ubuntumint/

# Install RVM (Ruby Version Manager)
bash < <(curl -s https://rvm.beginrescueend.com/install/rvm)

# Enter the following in ~/.bash_profile and/or ~/.bashrc (replace YOUR USER NAME with the username you're logged in with):
[[ -s "/home/YOUR USER NAME/.rvm/scripts/rvm" ]] && source "/home/YOUR USER NAME/.rvm/scripts/rvm"  # This loads RVM into a shell session.
rvm use 1.9.2

source .bashrc

# Install Ruby 1.9.2
rvm install 1.9.2

# Set it as the ruby version to use through rvm:
rvm use 1.9.2

# Install latest version of Rails:
gem install rails

mkdir rails_projects
cd rails_projects

# Now you should be able to create a rails project with sqlite3 binding:
rails new hello
cd hello
rails server

# browse to localhost:3000