Install LAMP in Ubuntu 11.04

 This document will walk you through the installation of what is known as a "LAMP" system: Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. Depending on who you talk to, the P also stands for Perl or Python, but in general, it is assumed to be PHP. I run CentOS on my servers; these directions were written for CentOS/Red Hat/Fedora. I have had requests for SuSE (another RPM-based distribution) as well as Debian-based systems, so I will work on variants of these directions for those distributions in the future (donations might help speed that process up!). The main difference between the distributions is in the paths to the startup scripts. Red Hat systems used /etc/rc.d/init.d and SuSE uses /etc/init.d.

If you are a web developer proficient in PHP& MySQL, you may be using the popular WAMP Server (Windows, Apache, MySQL and PHP) in your windows platform. The more powerful Linux and Unix platforms have a similar package called LAMP which stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP and serves the purpose of web development based on Open Source concept. Apache is the Web server, MySQL is the relational database and PHP (Preprocessor Hyper Text) is an object oriented programming language.

There are many approaches to installing LAMP server in Ubuntu 11.04/10.10. The simplest and most likely to be used approach is to use the following command in terminal:

sudo apt-get install lamp-server^

The command initiates the download of LAMP server to your PC with a password prompt and when finished, its done!
Open your browser and type the following:

http://localhost/

and hit enter. If you get the following screen, then Apache definitely works.
To access MySQL, you can use the following URL:

http://localhost/phpmyadmin

The following screenshot depicts PHP Myadmin being explored with your browser.
Finally to test PHP, place a php file (eg: test.php) in your www folder with the following script:

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Now call the file through your browser  by typing http://localhost/test.php
There are other procedures to install LAMP, like using tasksel or installing Apache, MYSQL and PHP separately.