LAMP is an acronym which stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. The letter P also stands for Perl and Python programming languages. LAMP is a free software stack which powers, primarily, web servers. Most GNU/Linux distributions bundle these packages in the install media and repositories. Let us take a look at how to install LAMP using Fedora. I will restrict the P in LAMP to PHP only for this article. Perl and Python fans, bear with me.

While installing Fedora you can choose to install "Web Sever" which contains these packages. You can install them later also. Let me walk you through the actual steps to get LAMP working on your computer. I assume you are running Fedora 8 on your computer.

1. Launch the terminal by clicking

Bhargi told us how to configure virtual hosts with Apache and Uuntu in a few steps at http://lampcomputing.com/node/38. That post indeed gives us insight to Apache and Ubuntu.

When we are working in teams, we build websites on development servers first. After thorough testing and client's approval we move them to live web servers. When I work on websites alone, I use my desktop as my development server. When I set up too many websites on my desktop, it is a pain in the neck to switch between them frequently. Each time I switch between them, I have to edit the httpd.conf file and restart Apache. With virtual hosts the problem is eliminated.

The term Virtual Host refers to the practice of running more than one web site (such as www.company1.com and www.company2.com) on a single machine. When you configure virtual hosts your web server runs many websites at any given instance. You don't need to edit Apache configuration file and restart Apache every time you switch to a different website.

Here's what I did to set-up virtual hosts on my Fedora desktop