What linux distro do you recommend for rails dev?

I would recommend Ubuntu, which is the best Rails desktop environment.

And very shortly, setting up Ubuntu to develop with Rails will be ridiculously easy.

Can you explain why ?? I think that's a matter of taste! Because all distros have a shell (for ssh), and all of them allows you to install an IDE (Apatana, Net beans-Now supports Rails!), so I don't think that anyone here could convince you logically by a distribution or another.

Personnally I'm using openSuse for 8-9 months now (10.0 then 10.2), and since 6 months I'm using only it (bye Windows!), it is really comfortable and convivial (KDE of course! and please do not transform the discussion into a KDE vs Genome one!), and it could help a Windows person to perform ordinary tasks like your wife or me!

I found openSuse cool with his Yast, which is similar to the control panel, and there, you can also add or remove any Software using the OS DVD. I'm pretty satisfied with this OS.

And for deployment, I'm creating Remote FTP folders for quick FTP, and as others do, I'm using ssh from the Shell (Command line) for administration.

Finally, feel free to choose your distro but in order to not annoy you partner choose the KDE environment (You will be asked to do during the install of almost all of linux distros)

If you have any question about every day Programming / use, they're welcome.

Mahmoud M'HIRI Mail: mhiri@ieee.org Phone: Under request

I'm also in the minority of liking Suse. I host one rails app on Suse 10.0, and run SLED 10 on my desktop. Primarily I like it coz it comes working very close to the way I like it out of the box, and YAST.

This review describes some of that and other stuff

Forrest