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for most of the geeks :-) Before being bashed by FOSS gurus, let me show my example.

I'm a Java and Ruby (on rails) programmer. I've dropped windows about 2 years ago, and used various flavors of linux in this meantime (debian, ubuntu, gentoo and ubuntu again). Less than one year ago I bought my first mac (mac mini).

Java development in Windows is "standard", in linux is good and in Mac it is great. You have the same tools as Windows or Linux and, since java is "portable", all other tools (frameworks) works fine. The difference between Windows and Linux/Mac is that Windows restricts you *a lot*. Ex.: I put all my libs in just one place, and make sym links to them in the projects I need. In Windows, its not possible (afaik) (yes, a simple example, but try to keep the libs updated on a windows box...) . And the difference between Linux and Mac is performance. *Usually*, a Java application runs faster on Mac than on Linux, because the Java VM in Mac is done by Apple, meaning that its built by the ones who knows the OS. In Linux, as you certainly know, is a certain pain to install Java (you need to follow one or another howto to get things working), and the performance is *usually* worse than in a Mac, because the VM is done by Sun, which is concerned mainly in getting things working. Yes, they care about performance, but not that much :-) (just remember that IBM and BEA's VM's performs better than Sun's)

When programming with Ruby, Mac is really awesome. Again, Windows looses here. In Windows, you have a set of tools (editors/IDE's) that also exists in other platforms, but its performance is poor (afaik). Also, some Ruby libs requires some sort of compilation (mysql, rmagick, ...), and it can become a pain to get things working. On Linux, things are far better than Windows. You have almost the same tools, but its far easier to get things working: just apt-get / emerge / whatever and you are ready to go. In a Mac, just "port install" what you need, just like linux. The difference between Mac and Linux is in the tools. The same ones + a fantastic editor (and cheap for some, expensive for others). Ok, its not that smart to left an inexpensive OS to go to an "expensive" one just because of an editor. But trust me, it worth.

Besides these work-related details, you also get an OS that just works, with enough applications to do what you usually do on a PC, a good terminal (I definitely cannot use the "cmd" anymore), a more than nice UI and so on... And for people who asks me "why use a mac", I just ask the same: "why use a Windows". There is no reason to use Windows. I can't find something that Windows does better than Mac (ok, I left an space here for some +5 Funny comments).

But yes, there *are* reasons to use Linux instead of Mac. Specially if you want "all the freedom you can get", if you don't want to spend a penny in software or simply don't care about the UI.

Of course, I talked about just the OS itself. The hardware *is* more expensive, specially here in Brazil (macs comes from US, which means they are taxed in *only* 100%). But if you think a bit better, it probably worth. In my case, I spend more than 10 hours/day looking at a computer, so, it certainly worth for me :-)

And I'm sorry, this would be a single-line comment, but it simply grows :-(

You should take a look at Starter Toolkit for DB2 on Rails. It is a complete package of everything that you will need including a copy of DB2 Express - C that is absolutely free to distribute as part of your finished application and it does not limit the size of your data like the other database servers do. It is a complete one-click installer for everything. The integrated installer is for Windows at this point but the one for Linux is in the works. Bookmark http://db2onrails.com/ if you are interested in watching this very fast evolving space. As for the IDEs, there are quite a few really good ones out there RadRails that just got an award as the best Open Source Eclipse-based Tool. Matt Kent, Marc Baumbach, and Kyle Shank have done an amazing job on the tool and a nice presentation at the RailsConf 2006 in Chicago. There is also RDT. There is even a set of add-ins called Saphhire in Steel for Microsoft Visual Studio 2005. I can just see all the sladhdotters rushing to get this one :-) and flame to death in the process.

Not sure what system you are on, but for osx there is Locomotive. You will get a magnitude of libraries (I guess the DB2 stuff won't be in there just yet) plus a nice gui to start/stop webservers for your Rails projects. Not sure if you were after Rails or plain Ruby, but anyway.

On the IDE front you could check out RadRails. Again, this focuses on Rails instead of "just" Ruby.
 
However, I do believe that Ruby is one of those languages that you can learn by just using it from command line. You do not need an IDE or huge framework to do fun stuff. You can at least get a feel for how Ruby does stuff to put you off it or to keep investigating.

Actually, if you are looking for a rails IDE I strongly suggest that you check out http://radrails.org/ available both as stand alone and as an eclipse plugin.

Try RadRails - it's the best Rails-specific IDE I found during my brief searching. I noticed a few bugs, but at least it's still being developed.

Rad Rails is what you are looking for. Very nice.

If you want an IDE for Ruby, I would recommend http://rubyeclipse.sourceforge.net/ for non-radrails programming or http://radrails.org/ for rails programming. Both are plugins to Eclipse and work pretty well. I probably don't hate Java as much as you, but Ruby definitely is a more powerful (as in language features) and concise than Java ever will be. To me, Sun had a chance to do something really interesting and productive during the Self days and they chose to dumb down C++. I'll just never be gung-ho about Java. But they do have some good tools...that's for sure. Ruby with a Smalltalk-like environment would be very powerful; and don't forget about the VM coming in Ruby 2.0 which should give it some more cred in the corporate environment.

For folks working with Rails, it's worth looking at RadRails, available as a standalone IDE (built on the Eclipse RCP), or as an Eclipse plugin.

No, Ruby will be more popular than either Java or PHP for building web-based applications. Take PHP's targeted purpose and framework simplicity, add the power of a better language, and you've got Ruby, and mindshare.

RadRails is an integrated development environment for the Ruby on Rails framework. The goal of this project is to provide Rails developers with everything they need to develop, manage, test and deploy their applications. Features include source control, debugging, WEBrick servers, generator wizards, syntax highlighting, data tools and much much more.

The RadRails IDE is built on the Eclipse RCP, and includes plugins from RDT and Subclipse. The RadRails tools are also available as Eclipse plugins.

Making use of this and the Eclipse RCP, the RadRails is also making a big contribution to the community.

FYI, there's a Rails IDE out there: http://www.radrails.org/ . Its a pretty new IDE (actually, plugins over eclipse) that promisses to kill your first point :-)