Ruby is a dynamic, open source programming language that focuses on simplicity and productivity. It has an elegant syntax. To install Ruby, users can download it from rubyforge.org for Windows or use apt-get install for Linux. Interactive Ruby (IRB) allows users to test code snippets, methods, classes and objects. Ruby shares some similarities with PHP like dynamic typing, classes, and string interpolation, but also has differences like strong typing, everything being an object, and only false and nil being falsey.