What are the important differences in these setups for a newbie to manage rails applications

Question

I'm learning Rails development and attempting to learn how to manage a server to host the rails applications I develop. I want to host each of them at distinct domain names.

I know that server management is not to be taken lightly (that's an understatement) but Linode has some guides for beginners so I'm hoping I can learn as I go. I have to make a choice among these three set ups (if I want to use their guides). Can you offer any insights about what I might prefer as a beginner?

-Apache on Debian 6 (Squeeze) 
-Apache on Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid) 
-Apache on Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick)

I personally use a Mac (if that matters)

Answer 1

If I was in your position, I'd probably go with Ubuntu 10.04.

Here's why.

Ubuntu and Debian are mostly equal. Debian's packages (that is, software bundles) are a little better tested, and the process of integrating them into the operating system is slower than that of Ubuntu. As a result, Debian is more stable, but older.

Ubuntu tends to have more recent and up to date packages than Debian. As you're doing Ruby On Rails, and it's for testing, not production. I'd say sacrifice the possibility of instability for newer packages, and use Ubuntu. You can use 10.10 or 10.04.
Either has been out for a while and is pretty stable.