I have my development environment on my ASUS netbook set up to use crunchbang. This is a Linux distribution that is based on the current debian build but is really streamed down to include just what you need. The ui is minimal, keyshortcuts straightforward e.g space and windows key is for the menu. No waiting for graphic menus being pulled up. Most importantly it's not abandonware like the netbook version of ubuntu

Installing ruby on rails has been easy and allowed me to work rather than configuring libraries on the OS. My document viewer for the legend file of dwarffortress needs to read an XML of 147 megs in size . Obviously something that cannot be done in realtime on a web page. I have used DJ or delayed_job gem to do this. Simple task of using a keyword delay in front of your method and some config of course.

Hoping to get the app up on heroku real soon .