So there is plenty of information out there about installing a standard LAMP server out there.

I’ve had a LAMP server on my Ubuntu laptop for quite some time. But i ran into troubles when I wanted to have a CakePHP installation on my local machine because I couldn’t get Apache’s mod_rewrite to work.

I’ve finally figured it out, and, given the difficulty I had finding the information I thought I should probably share my experience with the world.

So, firstly, installing LAMP. In case you’d missed it, LAMP stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP.

You’ve already got the Linux part, so I just went through the Synaptic Package Manager and installed the following repositories (you can find a much more detailed description here and here):

• apache2
• php5
• mysql-server
• php5-mysql (may be installed by default with the mysql-server package – sorry, can’t remember)
• phpmyadmin
• webmin (a very helpful program

Read what others have written on this topic as well though.

Next, in order to give yourself permissions to the /var/www/ directory, you need to run the following command in your terminal:
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/

It’s not a secure thing to do (I don’t think) but it will make your life much easier (no permissions to worry about, no need to “sudo nautilus”).

Finally, getting mod_rewrite to work.

First, initiate it with the following command:
a2enmod rewrite

Then edit the file /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default. You can do this with the following command:
nano /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default

Then change the “AllowOverride None” to “AllowOverride All” in the “” section.

In other words, when you run the nano command above you see the following in amongst some other stuff:

Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride none
Order allow,deny
allow from all

Change the AllowOverride to ‘All’.

Then restart your server with the following command:
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

And you’re done!

Disclaimer: I’m a terrible systems admin and make no guarantee for the above. However, it did work for me which makes me happy.

My laptop is now reaching old age. It’s over 3 years old and it’s starting to get a bit clunky. Time for a new one this year sometime.

I want a 13″ laptop as portability is an issue. So I started to look at the usual laptop vendors, Toshiba (which I currently have) and HP* were the two I checked out. As well as Mac.

You can get some reasonable 15″ laptops for around $1,200 which would suit my needs… if they were 13″. But as soon as you go with the smaller model it adds at least $1,000 to the price (often $2,000) and the processor significantly deteriorates in speed (almost halves in some cases).

Which leaves me with the MacBook. 13″ at around $1,200 with an Education discount.

There’s no denying the quality of the Mac hardware. The screens are nicer, they have the multi-touch touch pad, they are thin etc. But I just don’t was to run the MacOS. I prefer Linux.

There are a range of reasons but the primary one is that Mac locks you into Mac stuff, Linux just doesn’t. I hate iTunes and I hate iPhoto. If you want to take full advantage of the MacOS then you need to use these two programs and once you’ve done that you’re locked into them. You can’t reclaim your music (without significant hassle) once it’s in the iTunes library. Anything else just feels like a perpetual workaround.

I’ve got a huge personal commitment to Open Source Software and data longevity is a big reason for this.

So i’m going to buy a MacBook in the next 12 months, and I’m going to install Linux on it so that all my data is free forever, not locked into am over-hyped OS that could well go out of fashion one day and leave you with a bunch of music you’ll never be able to listen to again.

(Cue Mac Fanboys who are the second biggest reason I hate Macs. Actually, I don’t hate Macs (I use one at work) I just prefer Linux.)

*If you know of a laptop brand that matches a 13″ MacBook please let me know.