Filed under: k/ubuntu, mac os x, programming, rubyonrails

My buddy Ed is a great programmer, & in the last many months he's really gotten deep into Ruby on Rails. Periodically he emails the CWE-LUG list about Ruby, & his info is always good. Here's some of those emails for your edification & enlightenment.

Here's a presentation that Ed did for the Unix Users Group here in St. Louis:

<begin Ed>

Hello. I know its been 1.5 weeks since my tutorial on Ruby at the general SLUUG mtg, but finally the slides are up.

http://www.cwelug.org/~edh/RubyForNubys.sxi

An OOo Impress document. Feel free to convert it to HTML or PDF if you want.

It is released under a Attribute/Non-commercial/Share-Alike Creative Commons licence. That means you can edit it and redistriute it as long as attribution is maintained and it is released under an identical license.

<end Ed>

Then Ed had this to say about developing Ruby on Rails for Mac OS X users (even though I'm pretty sure Ed uses Linux).

<begin Ed>

http://hivelogic.com/articles/2005/12/01/ruby_rails_lighttpd_mysql_tiger

This is a step-by-step tutorial on getting a full-on Rails stack up and running on your Mac. BTW, Macs are very good at doing Rails development.

<end Ed>

Finally, here's Ed on getting Ruby on Rails working on my fave distro, K/Ubuntu.

<begin Ed>

Hi, just got a new HD from the EPC sale and installed Breezy onto it. Bit tricky setting up support for Rails programming. The basic issue is getting compiler tools/libraries. I wrote up my travails in my blog: http://greenprogrammer.blogspot.com.

Other than that, Ubuntu really rocks. My laptop seems over 100% faster. Not sure if the HD is the culprit or Ubuntu is just tuned better. And when I plugged my old HD into a USB drive enclosure, Ubuntu popped up various file browsers for each partition. That is seriously cool, man.

Just FYI.

<end Ed>

(Check out all of our posts on Ruby.)

Filed under: k/ubuntu

Windows & Mac OS make it really, really simple to install software because there's really only one way to install: click on Setup.exe or Install.exe in the case of Windows, or a .dmg in the case of Mac OS. Linux is more difficult because there's such a variety of packaging formats. Now here comes the excellent How to install ANYTHING in Ubuntu!, which delivers exactly what it says. This puppy covers the package manager as a concept, the APT GUI Synaptic, using APT via the terminal (my preferred method), and how to install a package manually, no matter if that package is a .deb, .rpm, .tar.gz, .sh, .bin, or even a .exe. And while the title is for Ubuntu, this guide works for pretty much any Debian-based distro. Read & bookmark this one, guys - it's a keeper!

(Check out all of our posts on K/Ubuntu & software installation.)

Filed under: debian, k/ubuntu, java

As I recently pointed out, Sun finally changed its license so that distros like Debian can include the Sun JRE. Thanks, Sun! Here's the command you need to run:

apt-get install sun-java5-jre sun-java5-plugin sun-java5-fonts sun-java5-bin

That'll do it, fair readers.

(Check out all of our posts on Sun and Java.)

Filed under: k/ubuntu, humor

K/Ubuntu has its own bug-tracking system, Launchpad. Go check out bug #1, available at https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+bug/1.

Awesome.

I heart Mark Shuttleworth.

(Check out all of our posts on K/Ubuntu.)

Filed under: k/ubuntu, review

Dapper Drake, the new version of K/Ubuntu is out, and it rocks. I've been using the beta for awhile, & I'm very very very happy. For an interesting review that's chock full of screenshots & useful info about software to install, check out Ubuntu Dapper Review. In particular, there's nice info about getting the nVidia drivers installed, and even the coolest eye candy in the world, XGL. I'll be posting more in coming days, so keep posted ... & if you haven't tried Dapper yet, go try it!

(Check out all of our posts on K/Ubuntu.)