Been a while, yeah I’ve been working on a some project so barely have time for this blog.

A comfortable web development environment for most peoples might vary, but for most of them, it has to be easy to access web root folder and files, easy to manage webserver and mysqlserver.

On this articles, I’m going to give you a tutorial on setting up a comfortable web development environment for linux systems, from my point of view. Not entirely all systems, tested on Ubuntu 9++, Kubuntu 9++ and up, Mint 10 KDE. In theory, it will work on most linux system, just need some workaround.

Here are a few things that needs to be prepared :
1. Fully working Linux Systems
2. A bit knowledge on how to use the terminal
3. XAMPP for Linux [get it here]
4. Patience

First thing first, assume that I use apronouva as username and my host system name is insomnity, change it to whatever username you used for login into your systems.

Lets assume you already downloaded XAMPP for linux, by the time I wrote this tutorial, it is ver. 1.7.4 packed with :

Apache 2.2.17, MySQL 5.5.8, PHP 5.3.5 & PEAR + SQLite 2.8.17/3.6.16 + multibyte (mbstring) support, Perl 5.10.1, ProFTPD 1.3.3d, phpMyAdmin 3.3.8, OpenSSL 1.0.0c, GD 2.0.1, Freetype2 2.1.7, libjpeg 6b, libpng 1.2.12, gdbm 1.8.0, zlib 1.2.3, expat 1.2, Sablotron 1.0, libxml 2.7.6, Ming 0.4.2, Webalizer 2.21-02, pdf class 009e, ncurses 5.7, mod_perl 2.0.4, FreeTDS 0.63, gettext 0.17, IMAP C-Client 2007e, OpenLDAP (client) 2.4.21, mcrypt 2.5.7, mhash 0.8.18, eAccelerator 0.9.6.1, cURL 7.21.0, libxslt 1.1.26, libapreq 2.12, FPDF 1.6, XAMPP Control Panel 0.8, bzip 1.0.5, PBXT 1.0.11-6-pre-ga (temporarily disabled), PBMS 0.5.15 (temporarily disabled), PBMSlib 0.5.15, ICU4C Library 4.2.1

Pretty much complete, right ? Now lets get the dirty bit begin. Now hit up a terminal and make sure you and the newly downloaded xampp-linux-1.7.4.tar.gz are on youre home folder. In short, just extract the whole archive into directory /opt/ . Afterwards, set up the permission owner of the files and make some linking to the home folder so we won’t need to go deeper into the system just to edit our web files and folders. Remember, change apronouva to your own username!

apronouva@insomnity ~ $ sudo tar -zxvf xampp-linux-1.7.4.tar.gz -C /opt/
apronouva@insomnity ~ $ sudo chown -Rf apronouva /opt/lampp/htdocs/
apronouva@insomnity ~ $ ln -s /opt/lampp/htdocs/ www/

Yup, particularly installed, your xampp for linux and basic directory set up. The outcome will be as belows.
xampp-linked

Now for the Graphical User Control Panel.

Actually, xampp already have linux graphical control panel, its just that the documentation are not that complete and its features not as rich as Windows Xampp Control Panel. All located on directory /opt/lampp/share/xampp-control-panel/ theres python application and already compiled binary. We’re going to use the already compiled one. Hook up terminal again.

apronouva@insomnity ~ $ sudo nano ~/.local/share/applications/xampp-control-panel.desktop

Now input the settings and code below. For gnome user, change kdesudo to gksudo. For the icon, you may use whatever icon you wished for because the location and icon name might vary depending on your system.

[Desktop Entry]
Comment=Start Developing Web Apps
Name=WebDev Env. CP
Exec=kdesudo /opt/lampp/share/xampp-control-panel/xampp-control-panel.py
Icon=/usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/actions/kt-start.png
Encoding=UTF-8
Terminal=false
Type=Application

Next, your shortcut should be available on your Application Launcher under Applications > Others (gnome) or Application > Lost & Founds (kde) . You will need to provide sudoers passwords to use the application.

xampp-linuxcp

Yup, now just activate the apache2 server, mysql server, open up your browser and point to http://localhost. Now you will be able to edit and develop your web application easier. The services can be activated when needed and won’t eat your resource when not needed.

If you want to mess around with the configuration such as httpd.conf, mysql.ini, php.ini, proftpd.conf. Go to /opt/lampp/etc/

Well, thats all for now folks, happy developing. Comments, suggestions and corrections are always welcomed.

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