Easiest Way to Setup a Web Development Environment on Ubuntu-based Distros

Did you know how easy it is to get a basic web development environment on your Ubuntu-based Linux distribution? Guess what, it just takes 2 commands on the Terminal:

sudo apt-get install tasksel

This will install a small utility which lets you install a lot packages grouped together as software collections.

sudo tasksel

Launch tasksel and select ‘LAMP server’ by pressing the SPACE key, press ENTER when you are done (see attached screenshot). It will take some time for the required packages to download and install. Near the end of setup, the installer will ask you to create a password for MySQL’s root user.

After the installer finishes, you have the environment ready. Head over to your favorite browser and open http://localhost If everything went fine, the page will say It works!

Now you can start creating websites by putting your html, php, etc. files under /var/www directory or just choose to go with CMS solutions like Drupal, Wordpress or Joomla.

The author also recommends to install phpmyadmin package if you happen to work with MySQL databases.

An edited version of this article first appeared at http://www.muktware.com/articles/08/2011/1348