Another anecdote about my inability to handle Ubuntu for the delight of the knowledgeable readers:

Since gem 1.3.1 is not out for Ubuntu, rails won’t start the server. Therefore I tried to manually update gem. And since gem 1.3.1 has a totally different folder structure, it won’t recognise the gems saved in /var/lib/gems, instead the gems are saved under /usr/lib/ruby/gems. Thus I reinstalled rails using the new version. And although rails does not complain about the version, the server script still does not work, reporting tens of errors. I have no idea why, therefore I downgraded to Ruby 1.8 et cetera et cetera. Instead of enumerate my painful stationary odyssee, here is what worked for me:

1. Install ruby1.8 and rails using “apt-get install”
2. Update gem following these steps.
3. Install rails using gem install rails.
4. Pray to the FSM.

It should also work under ruby1.9. But you have to write your own /usr/bin/ruby script calling ruby1.9 since the debian package ruby still depends on the older version.