Hi, my name is Javier.

I'm very exited to be here.
I'm here because I want to take the next step in my career, I want to build an small application for 2000 users with Ruby, but I have a quiestion for you guys:

What is the best distro for web applications?

I know sometimes this is a subjetive question, I have worked with Ubuntu for a while, and I like it, but I want to work with the best option for web applications,with stability and good support, I don't have any problems to work with any distro so, what do you recomend me?

Thanks.

Javier.

I'm new here also. I installed Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and couldn't be happier.

Also, this page http://www.linode.com/about/ indicates ubuntu is used most on linode.

Thanks for your answer jlevandowski, I saw the guide too, but maybe the popularity of Ubuntu is because it's easy, but i'm not sure about its stability and reliability.

Javier.

If you know ubuntu stick with ubuntu (or debian, ubuntu is derived from debian).

Both the lts versions of ubuntu currently use ruby 1.8.

Ubuntu LTS versions tend to be pretty stable. Most of the stability problems bugging Ubuntu have to do with graphical applications and device drivers -- things you won't have to worry about in a Linode environment anyway. Also, it's been a couple of months since the latest LTS version came out, so most of the early issues should have been ironed out.

Having said that, I personally prefer Debian. Guaranteed stability out of the box, and if you know Ubuntu you can use Debian too.

10.04 LTS uses Ruby 1.9.1.

+1

_________________
/ Peter

It shows 1.8 in the package repository online

http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/ruby

You're both right: ruby is a metapackage depending on ruby1.8, but both ruby1.8 and ruby1.9 exist.

I was looking at this page (http://packages.ubuntu.com/lucid/ruby/), which shows 1.9.1 is available in the universe repository.

Ah missed that it was in the universe, it's not in the 8.04 universe.

I usually work with CentOS, but that's just because I'm used to a redhat environment, and if you want greater expandability in the future, it's the way to go.

Though, I would strongly suggest Debian to Ubuntu. I don't know why so many people use ubuntu as a server platform, seems a bit silly to me when you have rock hard Debian just waiting for you.

I run a Ruby (on Rails) application on a Linode 512 with 32-bit Debian. I've had zero problems so far!

Instead of using the Ruby interpreter from Debian's repositories, I've installed Ruby Enterprise Edition (still 100% free) which is more efficient with memory usage. The Ubuntu 8.04 packages work in Debian too.

As a server, I use nginx with Phusion Passenger. PostgreSQL serves as the database backend.

Probably because ubuntu has more press and has a shinier website. I use it because I need some of the newer version of software.

Thanks for your answers.

Reading your answers I can see that I have a lot of things to learn, I think I'll use Ubuntu for the moment, the principal reason is because it works with newer versions of software and because it's easy.
I know that there are others options, but Ubuntu is good for now.

Javier.