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I am an automation engineer, I've been using Java bindings with selenium web-driver on a windows machine for development of automated tests, however, I am switching to Ruby for developing automated tests, I want to setup Ubuntu at home for some individual development. I've heard that most ruby users develop on Macs because of issues with Gems on Windows.

Are Ubuntu and Mac OS X similar to develop on? as in are the command terminal commands the same as there both UNIX like?

Also does selenium web-driver work with Ubuntu?

Any other advantages over Windows?

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Ruby works great on Ubuntu because Ubuntu is a variant of Linux and Linux is the operating system that Ruby's creator and current "benevolent dictator", Yukihiro Matsumoto, uses.

The command line programs ruby, irb, and gem all work well.


As far as Selenium WebDriver, it's a bit tricky to install, but I found a simple way. Open a terminal by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T, and run the following two commands:

sudo apt install ruby ruby-dev
sudo gem install selenium-webdriver

Selenium WebDriver should work properly. Its creators say "We test mainly on Ubuntu, but other variations of Linux should also work where the browser manufacturers support them."

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  • Thanks for the input, Sounds great, however, I need to find out about webdriver! lol :) Mar 29, 2016 at 9:23
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    You can burn an Ubuntu installer to a DVD or USB drive. If you boot from it, it will allow you to try Ubuntu without installing it. When you try it, the two commands to install Selenium WebDriver for Ruby should work. You can also install any browsers or other software you want. You can then test out your code and see if you can get it to work.
    – Olathe
    Mar 29, 2016 at 9:25
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I can confirm that selenium web_driver does work on ubuntu. I use ubuntu at work, also i used ubuntu at home, but recently i bought laptop. Linux drains battery so fast So i installed hackintosh on it and had no problems swiching from ubuntu to mac os x. I use python so had no problems at all just had to change system related commands that work on ubuntu but does not work on mac os x, that's all. Since then i have made many scripts using selenium no problems at all. Commands are pretty much the same. The only difference is that in ubuntu you have freedome, you will not have in mac ever!

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In any development, an attention to detail (eg "Ubuntu") is usually pretty essential. Ubuntu is case sensitive almost everywhere in the system so it'll punish you for mistakes like that.

But other than that, things you hear are usually just anecdotes, or repetitions of anecdotes. Your experience with whatever system as a development environment will very much depend with things specific to you.

It is free, so I'd strongly suggest you just try it and see.

Technically, Ubuntu is superbly tooled out for development. Asides from everything being scriptable, just things like xvfb (for a headless graphics server) make the sort of stuff you're doing easier. It's also generally well supported by other developers so searching for <problem> ubuntu usually renders something useful.

That it's free is just gravy.

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