Let’s get started. Firstly, let’s install Ruby.

We’re going to need to install ruby and irb and we can do this by typing sudo apt-get install ruby1.8 irb. The package manager might install other things here, but that’s fine as it’ll only be installing stuff we will need.

Now we need Rubygems. Get the latest .tgz file from Rubyforge and then navigate to where you downloaded it and type gunzip rubygems-1.1.0.tgz && tar xf rubygems-1.1.0.tar && cd rubygems-1.1.0 && ruby setup.rb && cd .. This should trigger five commands to run in that order: unzip, unpack, change into that directory, run the setup.rb file and change back into the previous directory. This will install Rubygems 1.1.0 for us.

The second to last bit of installing we do for now is Rails and Mongrel. This is easy, and all that’s involved is typing sudo gem install mongrel rails. This command may fail the first time, but try it again and it should work.

The final install is for sqlite3-ruby, which enables sqlite3 to be used easily with Rails. To install this, type sudo gem install sqlite3-ruby. If you’re going to be using MySQL/PostgreSQL for this guide then go for it. You can skip this step.

The final setup is just making the skeleton for your application, and that’s as easy as typing rails forum.

Now we’ll download and install NetBeans. Go to http://www.netbeans.org and click the Download Now link on the right hand side. Follow the instructions when you double click on the downloaded file.

After installing NetBeans, open it up and then click on File and then New Project. Click on Ruby on Rails application with Existing Sources. Navigate to the forum directory and click on it, but do not open it. Click next and then click finish. This will setup the project for you in netbeans.