As the title says, I’m tempted to make the move to a Mac for some serious Ruby/Rails development (maybe Java as well, but we don’t talk about that one ;-)). I recently put Ubuntu Linux on my Dell laptop (well, dual-booted it with XP) and enjoyed it a lot, so now I’m looking at Macs although I’m not quite ready just yet to buy one.

I did have a basic question though: I’m trying to get a “budget” development machine set up, since I don’t have the cash for a really good one right now. For Windows stuff I got by with 1GB of RAM and 60GB hard drive, so would a relatively cheap Macbook (the 2.0GHz, 13” screen one) with 2GB of RAM be powerful enough for Rails development? I don’t care too much about hard drive space since even with the 60 I currently have, I’m using maybe 10 for actual files (not including installed programs and things of that nature).

Thanks in advance for the advice :-)

Easily.

I run a 1 year old macbook, 2GHz + 2GB (80GB HDD + 500GB external HDD + 24” Dell) and it’s great for development and photography/photoshop/the rest (photographer + developer).

You won’t be disappointed. Especially if you’ve got an external monitor. So easy to use two.

Obi, I’ve got a 13” MacBook with 1Gb, and it’s great for Rails development.

Ok – bought it, now I am going to dive in.

What first? Use apt-get (or whatever the Mac OSX equivalent is) and install everything manually? Or just use Locomotive? I am leaning on the latter method to get up and running quickly (in the spirit of Ruby development*)

http://www.idisposable.net/2007/07/ok-got-macbook-now-i-want-to-learn-ruby.html

• i don’t personally know the spirit of Ruby development, but I hear he is great at parties

I would suggest two possibilities:

http://nubyonrails.com/articles/2005/12/29/an-even-better-way-to-build-ruby-rails-lighttpd-and-mysql-on-tiger

Don’t worry about the permalink title, it’s been updated to use mongrel instead of lighttpd. I haven’t tried it myself, so I’d love to hear some feedback from someone who’s tried it. Geoffrey’s stuff is usually rock solid.

There’s also the tried-and-true, but a lot more work, famous recipe on hivelogic.com:

http://hivelogic.com/narrative/articles/ruby-rails-mongrel-mysql-osx

It takes more time but has always worked for me without any problems.

I’m not a fan of apt-get like some people are; I’m not an expert with it but it seems to be more error-prone than these others. Locomotive also seems to lock people into a particular configuration that can be hard to change, but I don’t know that for sure.

Whatever you do, please post here with what worked (or didn’t work) for you.

What did you get by the way? MacBook or MacBook Pro?

Thanks Jeff.

I bought the MacBook Pro 15”, the juiced up model with the bigger harddrive (160GB) and 2.5Ghz (i think) processor. It is silly fast. I went for the bigger drive now because I am going to run VMWare Fusion with an image of my previous ThinkPad laptop.

Before I saw your reply, I thought about the Locomotive thing a bit more and decided it was too easy, and like you said, would likely lock me into a specific configuration. I wanted to get myself more familiar with the shell as well (coming from Linux back in the day, but without much practice lately).

I started following this tutorial: http://www.robbyonrails.com/articles/2007/06/19/installing-ruby-on-rails-and-postgresql-on-os-x-second-edition

I am about half way through now. I like postgreSql better than mySql personally anyway so I figured I would give it a shot.