It doesn't look like things are going too well between Ubuntu and myself.
The Ubuntu chronicles, pt.5 (including copious bitching about the Ruby on Rails setup process) article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.
I just had a total system freeze. Even holding down the power button didn't send the Term signal or whatever that it did before (when, admittedly, I tapped it out of curiosity.) Man, I haven't had that in *ages* with Windows! Application freezes, occasionally, yes, but not a whole system freeze. I thought that didn't happen on Linux...
Well, anyway, I was trying to get Ruby on Rails up and running before the freeze and it wasn't going well. I was getting a routing error (and apparently I'm not the only one) and I suspect it has something to do with the version of ActiveRecord or gems or something or other. RoR is a *bitch* to set up. Whatever happened to providing me with a package that I can unzip (sorry, untar) and run with? No, I had to go to Synaptic and download Gems and then get rails from Gems and then realize that somewhere along the line there was an issue (I think the Gem thing gave an error initially but worked when I re-ran it -- it's the main suspect at the moment.)
My Linux experience so far has been:
1. See application
2. Run application
3. See application fail
4. Get dependencies, extra utils, etc. etc. etc.
5. (Sometimes) Get application working.
I'm sure it's second nature to Linux folk but to someone coming over from Windows it sure feels sloppy.
It's funny to say this perhaps, given Linux's reputation, but in the Windows world we expect things to "just work". On Linux, it seems to a be a constant struggle of "how do I get this to work?" With the battle being half the fun?
I'm keeping at it because, on the other hand, it just feels so right and I know things are going to get easier as I learn more about the operating system and how it likes to be petted :)
(And, hey, being a noob again is just plain fun!)
The Ubuntu chronicles, pt.5 (including copious bitching about the Ruby on Rails setup process) article by Aral Balkan, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK: England License.
I hate to say this Aral, but it’s actually quite refreshing to see someone of your high technical profile, experience and accolades struggling with the same unexplainable crap that happens to me!
Most blog posts you read about the latest incarnation of this and that are all “It was such an easy process”, “it just works” etc etc. yet never is it the case when i (and i suspect many others) try it.
Keep at it dude!
Dan
I had no troubles installing it after following ryanguill’s advice (thanks to you!). And I have rarly been building apps in such a stable environment since. I converted my Laptop to Ubuntu lat week and have not even touched my XP-Dell since. Though on paper twice as fast as the Compaq-Laptop-Ubuntu Setup it cannot even compete with the productivity I get out of my Laptop. And all this took me me 4 days. For Windows XP converts I warmly suggest Automatix which is a little nifty script that extends the Synaptics packager, allowing you to isntall a few other programs that are not to be found in the built-in Ubuntu engine (Java 1.5 being one of them)…