The reason many people care about the language is because of the install method (at least that's been my issue). I don't use Ruby, so when I tried to use Octopress the other day I found myself installing a bunch of packages, then realizing that Debian's Ruby version is slightly too old (1.9.1 instead of 1.9.3), then trying to set up rvm or renv (or whatever), then giving up.
I write a lot of Python, so if it had been Python, I would have had the tools to properly install it, no problem.
This is the general problem with distributing "programs" with systems that are really better suited to distributing "libraries" (like gem, npm, and pip). If I am downloading a library, I must be writing code in the language, so it's no problem to expect me to have a reasonable tool chain set up. But if it's just a program that I'm going to run, I shouldn't have to have a language-specific package manager (let alone a rvm/virtualenv-type system) installed and configured.
Debian (and Ubuntu) actually ships all of 1.9.x as 1.9.1, fwiw. On my Wheezy VPS, "ruby1.9.1" is actually 1.9.3p194, on Ubuntu 12.04.2 it's 1.9.3p0, on Squeeze it's 1.9.2p0. It's some kind of API compatibility thing that probably makes sense to the Debian Ruby packagers, but not necessarily to you or me.
I write a lot of Python, so if it had been Python, I would have had the tools to properly install it, no problem.
This is the general problem with distributing "programs" with systems that are really better suited to distributing "libraries" (like gem, npm, and pip). If I am downloading a library, I must be writing code in the language, so it's no problem to expect me to have a reasonable tool chain set up. But if it's just a program that I'm going to run, I shouldn't have to have a language-specific package manager (let alone a rvm/virtualenv-type system) installed and configured.