Ruby on Rails can seem like a complicated beastie to newcomers, even though its learning curve is much lower than most similar technologies it is still there, so what's better than an expertly written tutorial that shows you exactly how to get started? Three of them, that's what, one each depending on whether your computer runs Windows, OSX or Linux. With one of these under your belt you're sure to be churning out excellent web software in no time!

• OSX-focused tutorial that uses the defacto text editor TextMate.
• Windows-focused tutorial, based around the excellent starter kit called Instant Rails.
• Linux-focused tutorial based around Fedora Core 4.

UPDATE: If you are running OSX 10.3 (Panther) you need to follow these instructions to get the current version of Ruby to install, the other link has instructions for 10.4:

• http://www.collcoll.com/index.php/2005/11/06/ruby-install-for-os-x-103/