Installing Apache2 With PHP5 And MySQL Support On Ubuntu 9.04 (LAMP)

Or. Wordpress. Or whatever. If you really really fear the command line, then use synaptic to do so.

Who in the world would need a "tutorial" for this? I'm shaking my head in disbelief. Or is it just me getting too old for all this?

How about people who don't need cacti, or wordpress? Installing an application just to get it's dependencies doesn't sound very smart to me (unless it's a meta package of course).

Hm yes, in that case you are right of course. But I'd rather make a Debian package for an application (if it doesn't exist already) than to circle around the repositories and the recommended way to use a distribution - that was what I tried to say. Sorry if I was unclear, or not precise enough.

I don't quite agree actually. I prefer to install web applications manually from upstream sources. Just the application themselves. I install the dependencies come from the repositories.

The problem with web applications is two-fold. First, web applications are often updated faster and more often than regular applications. Usually I want the latest version.

Second, most web applications are designed to be self contained inside a single directrory, unlike normal applications which usually install to */local/* according to the FHS. Most debian packaged web applications tear apart the application to spread them around according to the FHS. Sure, it follows the FHS but suddently a large part of the tutorials, plugins, extensions and other things about the application don't work anymore because they expect the upstream single contained directory layout. And you can't ask the application developers for support because they can't help you with the Debianized version.

That second problem affects web applications much more than regular applications. It comes from the fact that web applications often need to be customized before you use them. For example, I have had quite a few issues modifying the Debianized Bugzilla 2.x in Etch. I don't know if that still applies to Bugzilla 3.x under Lenny but I assume so.