One-Click LAMP

It occurred to me while chatting to a couple of other developers this week that an awful lot of PHP developers work on Windows. While this may not be a startling revelation, it did make me wonder how much trouble someone who's never dabbled in Linux would have getting a standard LAMP setup going by themselves (for a development environment). Personally, I found Linux software installation to be quite tricky, when I started using Linux more, and were I just using it to get LAMP going I might have given up on it. Which in turn made me wonder - is there a Linux distro that is nice and easy to install, and comes with LAMP all set up?

One-Click LAMP was posted on 27 March 2006 and has not been tagged yet. Tweet This!

17 Comments

Most distrobutions come with Apache installed, sometimes PHP as well but I haven't seen one with MySQL installed.

I have always been hosted by Linux servers but I have always had cPanel to help me but I am starting to use more command line to do things.

#1, Matt, United Kingdom, 27 March 2006. Reply to this.

I'm a Linux geek, so setting up LAMP servers is no problem for me. However, pretty much every distro I've installed has had Apache, PHP, and MySQL as options when installing the system. They might not be checked by default, but they are there.

By the way, your commenting "Remember Me" thing tried telling me I was Matt [above]...

#2, Joey, United States, 27 March 2006. Reply to this.

I use Ubuntu. LAMP goes easy using Synaptic (GUI for apt-get).

Even on shell is easy. Something like
"apt-get install php5 mysql-server apache2" or something like that.

You should try that.

#3, Nando Vieira, Brazil, 27 March 2006. Reply to this.

Whoops! Thanks Joey - I turned a caching system on and it's decided to cache the last person's details. I'll be turning that off ... now.

I'm quite happy setting up LAMP myself - was just curious really if there was a specific distro that included everything by default - pretty much ready to go out of the box. A zero-config, quick and easy LAMP install package ...

#4, Dave Child, United Kingdom, 27 March 2006. Reply to this.

try XAMPP. Not only is it a preconfigured LAMP stack, it is always the latest one. Great for a developer's home environment, not so great for a production site, as it is not very secure by default.

#5, Ferdy, Netherlands, 27 March 2006. Reply to this.

I'm no linux-geek. not a geek at all actually. It strikes met that there's a tendency to make things appear quasi-simple in the (open source) programming world. Everything is advertised as easy to learn en do. But eventually you have to learn, really learn. And there's nothing wrong with that. What's use of pre-installed if I can't find my way through the .ini? or worse not even to the .ini at all? at some point I'll have to. Let alone the hours to gather programming skills. Installation is the least of my worries, really.

#6, bro, Netherlands, 28 March 2006. Reply to this.

I use Xampp as well, have used phpdev http://www.firepages.com.au/ and even have some sets on usb sticks (http://www.chsoftware.net/en/useware/wos/wos.htm) that's ultimate cool stuff, running a complete AMP setup on a stick :) Even switching between php4 and 5 is a matter of clicking one button.

#7, Matthijs, United Kingdom, 3 April 2006. Reply to this.

You know what you're missing.... a cheat cheat-sheet.

Anyway, easyPHP all the way!

#8, Lewis, United Kingdom, 4 April 2006. Reply to this.

I haven't tried it myself, but you might want to look at the SME Server (which used to be at e-smith.org):

http://contribs.org/modules/news/

You manage it through a web interface, and here is the feature list from the site:
* Sharing of a single Internet connection between multiple computers
* A network firewall to protect against Internet intruders
* A robust email server, which includes virus and spam filtering and webmail
* File and print sharing
* Web application server, including support for MySQL, Perl and PHP
* Secure remote access
* Supported languages: Deutsch, English, Español, Français and Italiano, with more on the way
* Complete binary compatibility with the leading Linux server distribution
* and much more

#9, Pete, United States, 5 April 2006. Reply to this.

XAMPP is the best I have found to date.

http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html

Apache, MySQL, PHP & PEAR, Perl, ProFTPD, phpMyAdmin, OpenSSL, GD, Freetype2, libjpeg, libpng, gdbm, zlib, expat, Sablotron, libxml, Ming, Webalizer, pdf class, ncurses, mod_perl, FreeTDS, gettext, mcrypt, mhash, eAccelerator, SQLite and IMAP C-Client

And loads of versions, so you can get a configuration that closely matches your 'live' web server.

#10, Keith, UK, United Kingdom, 11 April 2006. Reply to this.

Thanks everyone - that's all good info. I think I'll go for XAMPP - looks like it makes the whole process nice and quick and easy.

@ bro:

I'm inclined to agree, to an extent. Thing is that most of my stuff is hosted on managed servers - I have no need to manage them myself, and don't really have the time to spend learning the ins and outs of server management. Where all I want is a dev environment, the important thing is to have something that can be set up quickly and with minimum fuss - and work straight away.

#11, Dave Child, United Kingdom, 12 April 2006. Reply to this.

i am looking at Slampp right now, and really like the way it all come preconfigured/ preinstalled. i'd like to see more of it. minus is that it still runs slackware 10.1 and lacks open vpn.. but otherwise one of the best (home) server solutions i've come across.

Kind Regards, Martijn Beekhuis

p.s. http://slampp.abangadek.com/

#12, ]V[, Netherlands, 17 April 2006. Reply to this.

Ubuntu if you want something easy. It's pretty simple to install apps...something like this at the command line will get you there:

apt-get apache
apt-get mysql
apt-get php/perl/python

Gentoo is nice, but it had a steep learning curve for me. Good if you really do want to learn linux though. And the merging is nice with config files, so they don't get wiped out or unchanged.

#13, chovy, United States, 12 May 2006. Reply to this.

Ubuntu 6.06 is the way to go. The server version installs and configures a LAMP server automatically.

#14, zoondev, United States, 22 June 2006. Reply to this.

For Linux Users, I'd recommend XAMPP for Linux. http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-linux.html

For the control panel, download the add-on at: http://addons.xampp.org/cgi-bin/search.pl?pid=32

The Control Panel works well. Allows you to start services: Apache, MySQL, etc., as well as switch between PHP4 and PHP5.

One-Click LAMP

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