This article was written for Ubuntu 9.04. Since then I have installed Ubuntu 9.10, it the same process works on there.
Setting up a web development environment on your Ubuntu 9.04 needn’t be difficult. All you need to do is download the latest version of XAMPP webserver and install it onto Ubuntu with some simple commands via the terminal. I’ll presume you are making the leap from M$ Windows to Ubuntu (9.04) and make this as simple as possible, so you can get going fast.
First download the latest version of XAMPP from Sourceforge (My version is 1.7.2). Direct link to XAMPP project: http://sourceforge.net/projects/xampp/.
Installation
I saved the XAMPP archive to my Home folder, and opened Terminal by either going to ‘Applications’ > ‘Accessories’ > ‘Terminal’, or pressing Alt – F2 and type gnome-terminal.
Once in the Terminal (making sure that you have saved the downloaded package to the correct folder), type the following command:
sudo tar xvfz xampp-linux-1.7.2.tar.gz -C /opt
Start / Stop XAMPP Server
To start XAMPP Server type:
sudo /opt/lampp/lampp start
To stop XAMPP Server type:
sudo /opt/lampp/lampp stop
Other XAMPP commands
To see what other commands are available use:
sudo /opt/lampp/lampp
Testing your XAMPP installation
Simply start your web browser and navigate to http://localhost/. Your should see the default XAMPP home page. On the left will be a link, ’status’, to test if all the services have started properly.
sudo tar xvfz xampp-linux-1.5.3a.tar.gz -C /opt
