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Comment by jrbeal | Hacker News Reader

Wow! My son was right! This site is awesome! Thanks SO much everyone! Good question wintermute. I wanted a Linux development environment but only have Windows at home. I was thinking about buying another box just for this purpose and load native Linux thinking this would be less ghetto but I don't know...

Thanks for the offer benigeri! I'll hit you up later...

thinkful.com sounds like a great resource.

shail: There were way too many problems to list here. Basically, the pattern I was falling into was as follows: I'd start a new project, start setting everything up, run into problems, fix them, run into more problems, fix them, etc... I'd have problems with everything from running bundle successfully, to deploying successfully. Then I'd get to the point where nothing would work and I'd eventually start over. Very frustrating.

The suggestions here are giving me hope and renewed enthusiasm. I'll check back later...

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I would suggest running Linux in a virtual machine. A decent choice would be the combination of Ubuntu running under VirtualBox (a free VM). Here's a random guide I found online (I'm not vouching for its veracity): http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/virtualbox

I bet it's possible to do all this stuff under Windows natively too, but it's probably going to be harder to find help. So if you have some familiarity with UNIX-like OSes already, I'd suggest just using something like Ubuntu in a VM.

Jey, I've tried to avoid installing Ruby and Rails on Windows because of all the horror stories out there. I had no problem installing VirtualBox and creating a Linux Mint VDI. In fact, I've worked with UNIX for the last 25+ years so I'm actually more comfortable with it (or Linux) than Windows. My problems are with Ruby and Rails and all the associated gems, getting the Gemfile right, understanding what the hell I'm doing with Github (git commit this, git commit that, etc.) And then running the server only to get a bunch of screwy errors that make no sense. But thanks to all the support in this thread, I'm sure I'll make headway soon. Thanks!

Unfortunately, developing for rails in windows today is a bag of hurt, so you'll probably need to learn some basic linux skills. I'd suggest, if your time and hardware allows, to spend some time in a virtual machine using one of the more popular linux distributions to get a hold of what's going on. Besides, there is a LOT of guides and tutorials of how to set up the development environment for ubuntu or debian.

Anyways, keep going, pain is temporary :)

Off topic: there is a small and hard to notice "reply" link below every comment.

Thanks xentronium, I probably wasn't clear on this but my linux skills are okay (been woring in Unix for 25+years). I set up a VDI with Linux Mint which seems okay... Thanks for the encouragement! (and the tip on the "reply" button -- haha)

There's a really long way from getting bundle to run until you need to deploy. I'd recommend not worrying about deployment until you've got your app up and running locally.

If you want to develop on Linux without buying another machine, you could (at least for now) download VirtualBox and install Linux on it. That will let you run Linux from within Windows.

My son said the same thing. I guess my concern was getting all the way to the deployment stage only to realize there was something I should have been doing differently way too late in the game... (I'm probably being paranoid!) Anyhow, so you recommend that I press with the development and NOT worry about deploying (to Heroko -- or whatever) until much later... I can live with that! (Just run the rails server and connect with browser at port 3000... right?

Honestly, yeah.. deploying to Heroku is ridiculously simple for simple apps, and from the sounds of it I would expect that you don't have a hundred moving pieces in it yet (and may never). Deploying to something else, like AWS, is more involved but still it's most likely not going to be much different in the end than it is in the beginning.

You might want to check out vagrant to set up your development environment under windows.

http://www.vagrantup.com/

I'll look into it... This sounds like it could be exactly what I need! Thanks!

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