Why do I get a core dump when running Irb or Ruby?

Question

I get a core dump when running irb or ruby at the command-line:

me@localhost:~$ irb
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
me@localhost:~$ ruby
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
me@localhost:~$ sudo irb
me@localhost:~$
me@localhost:~$ sudo ruby
me@localhost:~$

I'm running on ChromeOS dualboot with crouton using trusty and xfce.

I'm not sure how to begin fixing this. I assume that a language straight of the box, installed using

sudo apt-get install ruby-full 

will work.

The same thing may be happening with Heroku: the segmentation fault and non-responsive sudo command is the same.