Q:

The best way to install ruby on rails on linux for development

I would like to install Linux for development of Ruby on Rails apps. I would like to know your recommendations for this.
E.g.:

Which distribution of Linux?
What is good to have for development? (Nginx, php as a service, ...?)
What about requirements for machine?

I would like to install it properly for the best confort in developing. I'm now developing on windows, and it is horrible... (e.g. too slow, ...)
I am not decided to develop on Windows 7 with Virtual machine or Linux (with less equipment). What about you? What do you like and what you could recommend and whot you couldn't? Is there really any advantage to developing on Unix systems?
I am quite novice, I tried to install Linux for developing, but I did not recognize any difference.

Do you have any recommendations how to develop properly?
I'm using on Windows 7: Sublime2, SmartGit, RailsInstaller, ConEmu and Xampp as a mysql server.

//please make the point bold, what are you answered

A:

I think the Virtual Machine is the best solution because it is pretty light, can be easily exported/copied (saved in Dropbox also!) and can be destroyed easily too.

This is my setup on my personal computer that I use sometimes when I work from home :

OS: Windows 7 with Oracle's Virtual Box to manage a virtual machine
1 Virtual Machine with Ubuntu 12.04 (I hate the desktop on the new ones and I use gnome-fallback-session)
Yakuake as terminal manager (very handy: use ctrl+F12 anytime to open a dropdown window containing terminals)
RubyMine as editor to code my stuff
Thin as the web server (I think this is the default one included in Rails, no need for extra install)
git-gui to manage my stuff with Git
rvm as Ruby Version Manager (means you can work on projects using different ruby versions for each project)

My computer is a Asus UX32VD (Notebook), 6 Go RAM, CPU is a small i7. I gave 3 Go of RAM to my Virtual Machine, 1 processor core, and it works great! Very smooth, unless you open tons of tabs and watch several 1080p videos at the same time.

Some links:

Yakuake http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/guake-yakuake.html
RVM http://rvm.io/
Rubymine http://www.jetbrains.com/ruby/
Git-gui https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-gui.html

