[Rails-users] Question about Rails installation/configuration under Linux

[Terry L. <tj_...@ya...>]

Hi,
I'm trying to move away from Windows and have installed elementaryOS on an old laptop to become familiar with Linux.
I've downloaded Rails and have extracted the Rails .tar.gz file (extracted everything to the same folder "Downloads").
Running the shell command doesn't do anything, however if I click on the .jar file, Rails does start.   But it hangs at around 83% when building the configuration window.  I found a log file that is generated ("18xx.log").
The last line of this file is:
2015-12-29 08:36:27 DEBUG  Configuration sections with maximum elements of 25
The program hangs at this point whether I am starting a new game or loading an existing game.
I'm not sure what the problem is, but could it be that I have not unpacked the files to the proper file folder structure?   Where is the program supposed to be unpacked to, and what should the file folder structure/hierarchy look like?
Thanks help!