Anything speaking against the bitnami.org Ruby/Rails/Redmine Stack?

Question

I am looking to set up a Redmine server on a Windows virtual machine on my local workstation. (Background in this related question.)

I have zero knowledge of Ruby nor Rails, and while Redmine may be the opportunity to dip into those platforms somewhat, my first goal is to get it running as quickly and easily as possible. For that, I am eyeing the Bitnami Redmine Package. It promises point-and-click install, and a self-contained environment with everything you need.

Apart from the learning factor, are there any serious limitations this method implies? Any serious cutdowns in customizability? I will be wanting to customize the template right away, for example, and install plugins. The package looks o.k. to me but before I install it, I was curious to know whether anybody would advise against it and why.

Edit: The first impression is great. From 0 to a working Redmine installation in twelve minutes! Wow.

Answer 1

I've been using it for the last 6 months with 0 issues.

Recommended.

Answer 2

I'm using the Bitnami Redmine stack on Linux, and love it! Like you, I know little about Ruby and RoR, so I was really excited when I discovered Bitnami. I think the main things to consider are the location of the installation files. At least in Linux, I let Bitnami install MySQL to the default location. It worked just fine until I had to install plugins which required database migration; then I was up a creek without a paddle. On the other hand, Bitnami offers a slick uninstaller which gets rid of Redmine and all related services (MySQL, Apache, etc. - if you didn't have them installed before you began).

If you're just wanting to test Redmine out, I highly recommend Bitnami. It'd probably even work well long-term, but you just gotta keep the installation locations in mind. I've been playing with it on Linux for about a week now, and I love it!