I just finished installing PHP4 on my laptop. I already had Apache installed. So now I can work on PHP-related things even when I don’t have access to my servers (and I can test things out w/o having to upload them to he server). The PHP installer is dead simple. And, as I recall, installing Apache was easy too. If only installing software were as easy on Linux. That’s one area they’ll need to improve if it’s ever to be a desktop operating system (and, for that matter, ease of use is a feather in the cap of any server opwerating system as well).
Next I’ll try to get MySQL working with the whole mess, but I’m saving that for tomorow (or next week, or next month). At least now I’ll have no excuse not to be honing my PHP skills.