Installing ruby on rails on ubuntu 6.06 LTS by compiling nearly anything

#!/bin/sh

sudo apt-get install build-essential

cd /tmp

# download
wget ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/1.8/ruby-1.8.6.tar.bz2
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/17190/rubygems-0.9.2.tgz
wget http://www.zlib.net/zlib-1.2.3.tar.gz
wget http://www.sqlite.org/sqlite-3.3.17.tar.gz

# unpack
tar xf ruby-1.8.6.tar.bz2
tar xf rubygems-0.9.2.tgz
tar xf zlib-1.2.3.tar.gz
tar xf sqlite-3.3.17.tar.gz

# install
sudo apt-get install libreadline5 libreadline5-dev

cd /tmp/sqlite-3.3.17 && ./configure && make && sudo make install
cd /tmp/zlib-1.2.3    && ./configure && make && sudo make install
cd /tmp/ruby-1.8.6    && ./configure && make && sudo make install

cd /tmp/rubygems-0.9.2 && sudo ruby setup.rb
sudo gem install sqlite3-ruby -y
sudo gem install rails -y
sudo gem install mongrel -y

# create a rails test application
cd /tmp
rails rails_test --database=sqlite3
cd rails_test/
./script/generate model user name:string
rake db:migrate
./script/generate scaffold user
./script/server

If you need more you can look at the great deprec tools.
Update: A colleague told me to use "checkinstall". So we will not bypass the package management. Good point.