There’s a lot of conflicting information out there on how to install the MySQL gem on CentOS 5, but it’s very easy to do.  On a clean CentOS 5 install, as root, run:

yum install mysql-devel gcc make
gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-config=/usr/bin/mysql_config

That’s pretty much it.  Compile should work fine.

While you can use the version of Ruby that comes with Debian and Ubuntu's repositories, you'll find it to be a bit out of date. It's probably fine for most usage, but if you're like me and like to keep Ruby and its gems up to date, you'll want to install it from source.

Fortunately it's easy. Simply run:

sudo apt-get remove ruby libruby libruby1.8 ruby1.8 irb rdoc ri
sudo apt-get install libssl-dev libreadline-dev
mkdir ~/sources
cd ~/sources
wget ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/1.8/ruby-1.8.6-p111.tar.gz
tar xfz ruby-1.8.6-p111.tar.gz
cd ruby-1.8.6-p111
./configure --prefix=/usr
make
sudo make install

This will install Ruby. Now, to install Ruby Gems:

mkdir ~/sources
cd ~/sources
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/29548/rubygems-1.0.1.tgz
tar xfz rubygems-1.0.1.tgz
cd rubygems-1.0.1
sudo ruby setup.rb

Now you can use gem install to install any gem you want. If you want to install RMagick, note the article RMagick on Ubuntu Gusty (the instructions also work for Debian).

This method of installing Ruby and Ruby Gems is completely portable, you can upgrade to the latest release of both easily by simply substituting the version numbers of the packages in the instructions above.

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Flash video has become the de-facto standard on the web for displaying streaming video. There are many reasons for this, portability being the main one. Flash is available for Windows, Linux, Mac's, and a host of other devices.

Why then do Web 2.0 companies with Mac fans running their IT departments insist on forcing everyone to watch their tutorials, walkthroughs, screencasts, and such on Quicktime?

Quicktime isn't portable. It doesn't work well on Linux, because Apple thinks that Mac OS is the only UNIX OS out there, and don't see a need to distribute Quicktime for Linux. It's ironic, because if you include servers, there are many more Linux machines than Mac's, but that apparently doesn't matter.

I'm sure it sucked back when Mac's had to put up with everyone using Windows Media and Real Player (ugh), but that doesn't mean its right to take out those streaming video frustrations on Windows and Linux people. Quicktime sucks for Windows, frankly, and what support there is for Linux for it is spotty, at best.

Go with Flash video. You'll reach a wider audience with the least technical frustrations possible.

If you're trying to install RMagick on Ubuntu Gusty, you won't have much luck, as the new RMagick doesn't support the version of ImageMagick that Gusty currently has.

To install RMagick on Gusty, run:

sudo apt-get remove librmagick-ruby librmagick-ruby1.8 librmagick-ruby-doc
sudo apt-get install libmagick9-dev
sudo gem install rmagick -v 1.15.12

These commands assume you have Ruby and RubyGems installed already.

These instructions also work for Debian 4.

It's obvious Microsoft is flexing is muscle in the November 2006 statement by Steve Ballmer, CEO, by saying:

If a customer says, “Look, do we have liability for the use of your patented work?” Essentially, if you're using non-SUSE Linux, then I'd say the answer is yes.

But who are they really showing off for and wanting to threaten? Non-SUSE Linux users? The makers of non-SUSE distros?

The timing of this is strange. If Microsoft were worried about RedHat, Mandriva, and others, they would have made this threatening statement long ago.

No, I believe their target is Ubuntu.

In the Linux universe before Ubuntu there was chaos. Enterprise users usually rallied around RedHat, but only because they needed a generally limited set of well tested applications. The small to medium sized business user and home user needed a distribution that was flexible, upgradeable without issue, and yet offered stability. So, while usually sticking to RedHat based distributions, they often explored alternatives like Debian and Gentoo.

Debian was the most promising, offering fast installation of pre-compiled binaries and less painful upgrades between releases than RedHat. What's more, Debian's software base included just as many packages as the ultra-flexible Gentoo, without the compile time associated with it.

But there was a problem. Debian was slow to release new software and releases, and infighting broke out. It took almost as long to release Debian 4.0 as it did for Microsoft to release Vista after 3 rewrites.

All that's changed now. Ubuntu took the best of Debian and combined it with a team of energetic developers and released stable yet satisfying 6 month releases. As of this writing, we're on Ubuntu Feisty, an amazingly stable yet up to date distribution. There's even Ubuntu 6.06 LTS for the enterprise, offering 5 years of support for updates.

It really does seem that Ubuntu has finally given the Linux community something to rally around. That's not to say Ubuntu is the only viable Linux distribution, it seems to have the most momentum and solidarity behind it. This is a scary thing to Microsoft.

I believe Microsoft is finally worried about Linux, not just in the server market (where they have had to battle it for years, and not usually come out ahead), but on the small office server and desktop platform. The deal they inked with Novell regarding SUSE at first seemed encouraging to the Linux community, but Microsoft knew that SUSE Linux wasn't what the Linux community, an open community by nature, was ultimately seeking, and would not be satisfied with completely.

It's amazing to see this much attention and threat generated to Microsoft by a well polished, desktop and enterprise ready free Linux distribution. If the proverb concerning the tallest nail gets hammered first is true, Ubuntu is standing tall and proud.

Will Microsoft sue Canonical, corporate sponsor of Ubuntu over its alleged patent violations? Only time will tell. It does demonstrate however that Microsoft still does not get open source. It's fighting against the same community that could be one of its greatest assets if it were only able to put its hammer down and play nice with others.