I assume you're on XP Service Pack 2, purely because it's the latest, safest version at the time of writing. We've got a couple of options on Windows, the quick and easy temporary solution, or the more permanent solution. Whichever you pick is all down to preference, if you're just trying out Rails to see how it fits, then carry on with this section, otherwise skip on to option 2 and we'll get you a more permanent option.

Instant Satisfaction

[InstantRails](http://instantrails.ru...

For the purposes of this book I've decided to show you how to get Ruby on Rails working on the Ubuntu Dapper Drake distribution of Linux. Your experiences may be similar on other linux distributions, but I know this process to work on Ubuntu. Ubuntu comes with the apt package manager, which is akin to the port installer for Mac OS X, it handles dependencies of the packages you ask to be installed, and uses an online repository to get the binary files from. For Ubuntu, we need to get Ruby, ...