On Debian tried to Install Ruby 1.9.1, but it was too buggy as of 23. Sep 2009.
So I followed this one
which worked quite well.
Installing on Ubuntu
$ ruby -v ruby 1.8.7 (2008-08-11 patchlevel 72) [i486-linux] $rails -v Rails 2.3.5 $gem -v 1.3.5
To make Rails call ../public/index.html use
map.connect '',:controller => 'welcome'in config/routes.rb