vagrant box railsmn-dev-box out of date

[tamouse]

railsmn-dev-box is out-of-date: apt-get tries to hit us.archive.ubuntu.com which is no longer a valid address. There are difficulties as well with using it on Windows VirtualBox.

[momer]

Thanks Tamara, as we were discussing, this impacted a couple new users ran into this. We should have a larger discussion of whether or not we should maintain the rails-mn-devbox, or to direct new users into a gentler introduction to the command line, and something like (Ubuntu)|(Mint)|(Easy to learn flavor) Desktop.

There are 37 stars and 300+ forks on the rails-mn-devbox - so this should be considered.

~~Also, one user followed the directions to the T and she had it set up yesterday. Could it be networking issues @ CoCo? I'll try setting this up tonight on a windows machine, following the instructions, and documenting what's going on. ~~ EDIT: This user was using the railsbridge installer.

As with switching from the previous (awesome, but outdated) tutorial, I'm strongly in favor of delegating the install instructions to Michael Hartl's tutorial; he's able to get users of all types of OS running by recommending ruby / rails installer (one click on windows), or instructions through rvm on linux/os x.

Thoughts?

[momer]

Quick update - we chatted at the end of the night and discussed a sort of ease-of-use ordered list of options:

Easy

Choose one of the following 'cloud IDE providers' and get started:

• Nitrous.IO
• Cloud 9
• Codio

Harder

Windows only

Using Railsbridge's install instructions, install Ruby and Rails on your windows machine directly.

Mac OS X & GNU/Linux

Follow Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial instructions on getting Ruby and Rails installed locally on your machine.

Hardest

Set up a GNU/Linux Virtual Machine on your computer!

If this is your first time trying GNU/Linux or you're uncomfortable with the command-prompt/terminal, I recommend using Harvard's CS50 Fedora Appliance.

Once you've followed their instructions for installing and running the appliance, follow Michael Hartl's Rails Tutorial instructions on getting Ruby and Rails installed onto Linux/Mac OS X.

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If the rails-mn-dev box is going to be maintained, we can add this as an option under Hardest. Does anyone have interest in maintaining this? Note: that also implies you have the time to maintain it.

[tamouse]

Wow, too long away from this!

I'm hearing from more people they appreciate the IDE's-in-the-cloud for beginning. Hartl is also recommending this option to brand new developers.

I actually have come to the belief that setting up vagrant for first time users is more complex an environment that they should have to work with. There's just more moving parts to add to the ones they already have to know.

[tamouse]

Update again. Through Jason's effort, actually bringing up a vagrant VM suitable for Rails development is now pretty easy.

[tamouse]

I'm closing this issue as I've updated text to point at the alternatives.