Good idea Bad Idea
if your a web developer and your running a linux distro your definatly gonna need lamp. I hope in this day and age your using some kind of repository to install your apps but if your a from source install guy or girl thats cool.. for a basic lamp setup you will need

for apt get peopole sudo apt-get install apache2 php5-mysql libapache2-mod-php5 mysql-server
for source poeple find and download the following
apachex

libapachex-mod-phpx

mysql-server

phpx-mysql

phpx (or whatever version will be out at the time)

anything additional you want just pull the module in for it.. example phpx-sybase (mssql db processing) phpx-gd (image processing) etc.

To keep your hands of the cli for mysql and make your life a little bit easier you can download phpmyadmin either from repository or just download the file and extract it to your /var/www dir or if you prefer in your public_html dir if you have enabled the public_html module in apache which would allow you to browse your to your public_html dir in your home folder via appache eg

http://localhost/~yourhomedir/ - this displays the contents of the public_html directory in your home directory so no longer will you need to sudo to add content to your /var/www directory..

another little thing if / when you install apache to enable the public_html module just edit your apachex.conf file which maybe found in your /etc/apachex/ dir. when your finished with your edits restart apache with sudo apachexctl or sudo apache /etc/init.d/ apachex restart ( you may stop it then restart it if you please). if you end up getting a warning saying apache cannot deterine the hostname just add the hostname “localhosts” to your httpd.conf file which is also found in /etc/apachex/

thats all the linux knowlege i feel to share tonight i just thought finish setting up lamp yet again and i ran into those were the issues so i figured.. someone might want help and might stumple across my blog one day