If you've been seeing the term "LAMP" around the PHP community a lot and aren't quite sure what it is, you might want to check out this new post from Chauy.com, a look at what LAMP is and where you can get its various parts.

You may have heard of a server system called LAMP, and wondered what it is. Well, the answer is that LAMP isn't any one thing on its own '" it's actually a combination of four technologies. Together, the LAMP technologies form the most popular overall server system on the web today.

Which technologies are they? The answer lies in the name. LAMP stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL and Perl/PHP. The term originated as a marketing word to help point out that open source (free) software, when combined, could be just as effective as expensive 'enterprise solutions' like J2EE (Java) or Microsoft's .NET. To understand the system, let's take a look at the components individually.

For each component they talk about what the software is and where you can get it. Of course, on a lot of web hosting services, most of these are installed already. They do provide some links to other resources, however, that use a "package approach" to install all that you need at once (such as Apachefriends.org).