Unless you’re at a garage sale, when you hear someone refer to a LAMP stack, most of the time they’re referring to Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP/Perl/Python (or a combination thereof). The term has been floating around for a while and since then, it has come to encompass a lot of other P and M projects, such as PostgreSQL, mod_perl, mod_python, etc.
So what makes it a “stack?”
The term “LAMP stack” was apparently coined by Michael Kunze way back in 1998, when it appeared in the German magazine “c’t” (don’t ask me what that means). Simply put, engineers like to think of the software vertically, in a “stack,” with Linux and the bottom and other stuff piled on top.
LAMP is recognized as an extremely versatile and powerful platform upon which to deploy applications. As is often the case in the open source community, many different customizations have been made to suit all the different purposes and tastes of developers all over the world. A couple of good examples are Facebook’s super customized LAMP-based infrastructure and XAMPP, which come bundled with Apache, MySQL, PHP/PEAR, Perl, ProFTPD, phpMyAdmin, OpenSSL, FreeTDS, and a whole plethora of PHP goodies. XAMPP also caters to the Windows server crowd who might want to deploy a software stack on their systems, should you ever want to do such a thing (local dev environment, perhaps?).
One of the major selling points of LAMP is the ease of setup. If you’re willing to get your hands dirty in the SSH command line (it’s not nearly as scary as it sounds) you can set one up with as few as three commands. That would make you a Linux systems administrator in less than the time it takes to make a cup of coffee. After that, it’s just a matter of getting a new set of business cards printed up.
So what’s the point?
The point is, this is a fantastic starting point for a novice to jump into server administration and web application development. You’re looking at an environment that’s not too far off from what you’d likely end up working with as a professional developer. Coupled with the power of Virtualization and the reasonable cost of Cloud Computing, you can literally have root access on a Linux server slice with a host like Mosso. It’s an invaluable resource for beginners because even if you mess up everything (and I mean everything), you can re-image the server in just a couple minutes and start all over, all for way less than you’re going to spend on your first terrifyingly thick PHP book.