Oracle’s VirtualBox is a very solid and stable virtual machine but it isn’t the simplest to work with. So I abandoned it a week after I started working with. Recently, I had to return. Why? Vagrant. It is a fantastic virtual machine workflow system. It is amazingly easy to use and deals with VirtualBox for you. On top of that there are many excellent stack available for free download from the Internet. Following is how I setup my LAMP stack.

  1. Download VirtualBox from https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads. Choose “VirtualBox for Windows hosts x86/amd64”
  2. Follow instructions to install and start VirtualBox
  3. Download Vagrant from http://www.vagrantup.com/downloads
  4. Follow instructions to install Vagrant
  5. Restart Computer
  6. Download GIT from http://git-scm.com/download/win
  7. Following instructions to install GIT
  8. Start GIT by clicking on Windows Button > Program Files > Git Bash
vagrant box add precise32 http://files.vagrantup.com/precise32.box
git clone --recursive https://github.com/r8/vagrant-lamp.git
cd vagrant-lamp
vagrant up
vagrant ssh

Congradulations, you have your own LAMP stack.