Local Web Server For Web Development? 82
gwilymgj writes "I have been running Apache/MySQL for years using XAMP and WAMP on windows for web development. Recently I switched to using Ubuntu in VMware player, it is much faster and it also introduces me to a 'real' reason to play with Linux (been looking for a 'real' reason for ages). Are there any specific distributions which allow you to have a virtual webserver on your desktop? Any tips and tricks out there for this?"
Re:all Linux distros allow this (Score:3, Interesting)
It's kind of hard to understand why, if he already had XAMP and WAMP, he'd want to be using anything else as a simple development environment. For testing prior to deployment a VM is great; even better—if downtown would actually cost you enough money it's worth doubling up—get a second hosting just like your production one and call it staging.
Also, it's worth pointing out that Gentoo has great support for CMSes and similar things via the webapp-config command. It took me a few tries to realize how much more convenient it is. It just puts all the vhost stuff in a new file in /etc/apache2/vhost.d/ directory to reflect what it installed. Very convenient! I *think* it supports nginx too if you want to turn to the dark side.
Eclipse? (Score:1, Interesting)
Have you looked into Eclipse development? The WTP (Web Toolkit Plugin) makes it real easy to configure and deploy various types of web (and app) servers, all within the Eclipse VM.
Funny, we do the opposite (Score:3, Interesting)
Run XP in Qemu/kvm on Debian. I guess windows give you IIS development.
I vote "whatever" with many. You've used Ubuntu, stick with Ubuntu.