Normally, to set up a web server you'd have to install each of those individually. With XAMPP, you install one application and you have a fully functional server. Now, you're probably thinking, “Well, if it's that easy then why is this blog entry HUGE!?” Well. The reason this is a large entry is I am going to walk you through all the steps of setting up XAMPP AND make sure that you set it up so that it is secure! The default XAMPP installation is meant for developers on a local network, not for a real world installation, however, there are ways of making the installation secure and ready for real world use. Also, there are a few other things we'll need to do other than installing XAMPP to get things going.

Installing on Fedora Core 5. There are many distributions of Linux out there, my distribution of choice is Fedora Core. I prefer it because I've always had the most luck with it and have friends who use it. The steps contained within this article could be easily applied to Ubuntu or another distribution.