For quite a while I was wondering that with .NET and Java so developed and more and more developer friendly, why is PHP still so popular?
I recently took the responsibility of maintaining a website written in PHP, and I need to install a web server that supports PHP and MySQL. First I just wanted to install those on one of my Windows machine on top of IIS. Since I don’t want to mix this with my other works, I decided to put this on a virtual machine. It turned out to be a great decision, and I accomplished my task in just about an hour, and finally find the answer to my question.
First I decided to install Linux on my VMWare, and in searching for the latest and greatest version of Linux, I found Ubuntu.
What is Ubuntu
Ubuntu is an open source operating system based on Debian GNU/Linux distribution. It gets its name from a Southern African ethical ideology “Ubuntu” which means humanity towards others. It comes with multiple open source software packages, and it’s easy to install and ready to use.
You can download the latest version from their website: http://www.ubuntu.com. As of March 2010, the latest version is 9.10. A new version is released every 6 months, and are supported for 18 months.
The installation takes about 30 minutes, and the only time user will be prompt to key in anything is at the very beginning for an admin user name and password. It’s so easy that I don’t even know how to write a step by step instruction.
Ubuntu comes with many software package, and one of them is LAMP
What is LAMP
LAMP is an acronym for a solution stack of free, open source software, originally coined from the first letters of Linux (operating system), Apache HTTP Server, MySQL (database software), and PHP, (sometimes Python or Perl), which are principal components to build a web server for general purposes.
Step by Step Installation Guide of LAMP on Ubuntu
Here’s a good link on how to install LAMP on Ubuntu http://www.howtoforge.com/ubuntu_lamp_for_newbies.
So, why PHP is so popular? It’s free and it comes as a package with Linux. Open Source rules!
