Finally there is a cure for Ruby on Rails on Windows... Vagrant.

Ruby on Rails (RoR) on Windows is a pain! I have been searching for a simple solution for a long time. There are a few solutions out there but most of them were not good enough for me. Recently I discovered Vagrant and everything has changed. But before we dive into Vagrant let me highlight the issues I had with the other solutions.

RailsInstaller is the most popular solution for RoR on Windows. It's a one click installer that installs Ruby, Rails and even Git. The problem is that a lot of gems are not compatible with Windows so you might eventually hit a roadblock if you are someone who depends on 3rd party libraries.

Another commonly suggested solution is to run a linux distro through virtualization software such as VMWare or VirtualBox. This solution is a good one if you have powerful hardware. If you don't it'll definitely slow down your computer. Prior to Vagrant this was the best solution and I think it's actually the bases for Vagrant.