I would definitely go with rails 3.0. Most of the plugins you will want for a new project, while being new to rails, will be available in rails 3.0.

There's quite a few of good stuff in 3.0 that makes it a lot easier for new people to get started, lots of improvements to ease usage.

Rails just released 3 today as a final release, which means its the new official release supported by the Rails team, so you won't have to worry about lacking useful plugins. In fact, rails 3 has MORE plugins built-in to the ecosystem than its predecessors.

I'm still working with Rails 3.b4, but I've found Rails 3 to be awesome. Very stable for beta code, even. ;) I hope to update to the release version in a few days, and update some older projects too.

3.0 only. Most plugins are more or less compliant already.

Also, if it helps, rails tutorial ( http://railstutorial.org/book ) is updated for version 3. This is a pretty good resource when you are just starting out with rails.

Thanks, I read book for version 2, and I will skim for version 3.

3.0, no reservations.

Thanks a lot, I will go with 3.0