LAMP is an acronym for a solution stack of free, open source software, originally coined from the first letters of Linux (operating system), Apache HTTP Server, MySQL (database software), and PHP, Python or Perl (scripting language), principal components to build a viable general purpose web server.
The LAMP is widely used because it offers a great number of advantages for developers:
- Easy to code: Novices can build something and get it up and running very quickly with PHP and MySQL.
- Easy to deploy: Since PHP is a standard Apache module, it’s easy to deploy a PHP app. Once you’ve got MySQL running, simply upload your .php files.
- Develop locally: It’s easy to set up LAMP on your laptop, build your app locally, then deploy on the Web.
- Cheap and ubiquitous hosting: Even the cheapest Web hosts options allow you to run PHP and MySQL.
The key to the idea behind LAMP, a term originally coined by Michael Kunze in the German magazine c't in 1998, is the use of these items together. Although not actually designed to work together, these open source software alternatives are readily and freely available as each of the components in the LAMP stack is an example of Free or Open Source Software (FOSS).
LAMP has become a de facto development standard. Today, the products that make up the LAMP stack are included by default in nearly all Linux distributions, and together they make a powerful web application platform.
LAMP Deployment
The components for a LAMP server can be built and installed from source code, but this requires more effort and technical proficiency than other automated approaches such as installing them through a Linux distribution's package management system or deploying a ready-to-use TurnKey LAMP stack appliance which does not require any manual configuration or setup.
