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Apache

Submitted by Peter on Fri, 2005-04-15 00:00

Apache is the Web server for the Internet. Seventy percent of Web servers use Apache.

You can run Apache on every type of hardware that is useful for a Web server. You can use all the useful operating systems plus many others. You can use any file system supported by those operating systems. You can plug in every useful piece of Web software plus a whole lot of less useful stuff.

Installation

The installation on Windows is automated. Your operating system might make it easy.

Apache 2.2 installation on Ubuntu 11.4

Ubuntu 12.4:

  • Open Ubuntu software centre.
  • Search for mysql2.
  • Install Apache HTTP Server metapackage.

Unix with the Apple Mac user interface (OSX):

  1. Tools
  2. Switch on built-in Apache server
  3. System Preferences » Sharing
  4. Switch on Web Sharing

Apache 2.2 installation on Windows XP

Apache is also installed with packages including MAMP and XAMPP. The most common complaint about the packages are the ancient versions of software in the packages and the difficulty of configuring the package for anything other than the most trivial web sites. They might be fine for your initial attempts at Web development. They are difficult to use when you have to set up a test system with the same configuration as an exisitng web site.

Conclusion

Replace Microsoft's IIS with Apache. If you also use ASP and Visual Basic, the conversion to PHP is easy.

Further reading