First of all, well read - the `:background => true` is deprecated, because backgrounding things is hard, and unreliable, basically as you might have seen all it does it `nohup` and `&` if memory serves.
So there's two things you can do, the one - as you alluded to is `&` on the end of the line. The other would be `nohup` yourself, it'd be interesting to know *what* you are trying to background, as weird processes refuse to play well in the background in different ways.
Let's see if we can solve this for you :)