Ruby developers previously faced delays when installing RubyGems via GitHub due to the repetitive "Updating metadata for 563 gems..." message, but this has been resolved thanks to Eric Hodel's significant efforts. The improvements include fixing issues with multiple sources and optimizing indexing, resulting in almost instantaneous gem installations. Users are advised to update their systems with specific commands to take advantage of these enhancements, allowing them to install gems from GitHub directly without specifying a source, akin to installations from RubyForge.