Bye bye Domino, hello LAMP?
We are migrating completely away from the Lotus Domino Platform.
The decision has been made, and no amount of gnashing of teeth or tearing of clothes will help.
Rumor has it that we are going to be migrating to a LAMP platform
Hopefully, I'll get to stick around and learn this new stuff, rather than being shown the door. I love working in/with Domino, but I have a family to feed.
Now for the interesting stuff. Knowing how long it takes my organization to do anything, I think it is going to be quite some time before I get to play with, let alone see, the new stuff. So, I'm going to have to do this learnin' thing on my own. To that end, I have a few questions:
- I know the first three letters of LAMP stand for Linux, Apache, and MySQL, but what does the P stand for? Jake over at codestore tells me that it stands for PHP. That sounds good to me, but I've also heard that it stands for Perl and Python. So, which is it?
- How does one go about learning all this?
- Do I buy a distribution of Linux, or do I just download one?
- Do I go with Red Hat, or SuSe, or something else entirely?
- Is there a "LAMP for Dummies", or some other primer available?
- Where's the Tylenol?
- Can I do this on a single machine (I have a P3 / 850 with 720Meg RAM and 80G HDD available, will that be enough?)
Now, before I whip myself into a froth, I think I better calm down and go to bed. However, if anybody has any ideas, please feel free to let me know (either drop a comment or send me an email)
Thanks.
The Pridelands
Chris Byrne
Show n' Tell Thursdays
Maddox
Comments
A typical LAMP installation uses PHP. To be honest I do not like it. PHP is a security nightmare but apart from that quite simple and you can do really dirty things with it. For Python and Perl. Linux is freedom of choice, if LAMP means with Perl or Python for you, so be it. For learning LAMP I think the codestore approach, a good book and a simple application in mind is a good start.
For a Linux distribution I would go with Debian from https://www.debian.org but take the testing (sarge) branch. I think you won't like it so then later try Suse. The Debian experience is important because there are a lot of people that finally come back to it at a later point.
I would buy the Suse box, the documentation is quite good for beginners. If you live in the US, Red Hat is likely your employeers choice so you could give Fedora (https://fedora.redhat.com ) a try.
If you just want to have a quick and dirty try then take Knoppix from https://www.knoppix.org because you can run it directly from a CD-ROM without installing anything on your HDD.
For a book you could try "Beginning PHP, Apache, MySQL Web Development". The newest PHP release, V5, is quite new (and quite different from V4) so if you want the latest stuff just keep an eye on PHP5 books. For Linux itself you could either start with the Suse documentation, there is a Linux for Dummies too. I never bought a book about Linux so am not competent here (am I anyway?).
I would not go for a LAMP book because the AMP part runs on almost every platform and Linux itself is enough to have a book on its own.
For your hardware requirements a LAMP system will run on any machine. On your hardware it should run smoothly if you do not want a full desktop system like Gnome or KDE but just a real LAMP server.
I am quite curious why a company would switch from Domino to LAMP but good luck anyway.
Posted by Henning Heinz At 08:03:55 PM On 12/24/2004 | - Website - |
Late is better than never. I have installed Fedora Core 3 on my old Dimension box, and purchased SAMS Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache in 24 Hours.
I haven't started with the install of the AMP part yet, as I've gotten a little sidetracked with a customer project. I should be able to start "playing" sometime after this coming weekend.
As far as Fedora goes (I'm switching between KDE and GNOME desktops -don't have a favorite yet), I LIKE IT.
-Devin.
Posted by Devin Olson At 11:25:35 AM On 12/28/2004 | - Website - |
Fedora Core unfortunately is the distribution I only know little about. In Debian it is simple as the command is just e.g. "apt-get install <myprogram goes here> e.g. php4" and I am done with it (same for mysql and apache or apache2). I also do like the Sams books (although I normally buy the 21 days editions). As an old European peasant I prefer KDE (although I look at Gnome from time to time). I still think that php is evil ( so I do not use it much). As you could get an advanced PHP freelancer for 10$ per hour here anyway, it is not a good career path either.
Happy new year to you.
Posted by Henning Heinz At 03:05:39 PM On 12/29/2004 | - Website - |