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  1. Stackups
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  4. Web Servers
  5. Apache HTTP Server vs XAMPP

Apache HTTP Server vs XAMPP

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Apache HTTP Server
Apache HTTP Server
Stacks64.5K
Followers22.8K
Votes1.4K
GitHub Stars3.8K
Forks1.2K
XAMPP
XAMPP
Stacks143
Followers272
Votes6

Apache HTTP Server vs XAMPP: What are the differences?

Apache HTTP Server and XAMPP are both popular web server solutions used for hosting websites and web applications. Let's explore the key differences between them.

  1. Installation and Configuration: Apache HTTP Server is a standalone web server that requires manual installation and configuration. On the other hand, XAMPP is a software package that includes Apache HTTP Server along with other components such as MySQL, PHP, and Perl. XAMPP provides an easy-to-use installer that simplifies the installation and configuration process.

  2. Platform Compatibility: Apache HTTP Server is compatible with a wide range of operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and macOS. XAMPP, on the other hand, is primarily designed for Windows-based systems, although it does offer versions for macOS and Linux as well.

  3. Features and Components: Apache HTTP Server offers a core set of features that can be extended using modules. XAMPP, on the other hand, includes additional components such as MySQL, PHP, and Perl out of the box, making it a more convenient option for developers who require a complete web development stack.

  4. Ease of Use: XAMPP is designed to be user-friendly and beginner-friendly, providing an intuitive control panel for managing the web server and its components. Apache HTTP Server, on the other hand, requires more technical expertise for installation and configuration, making it a better choice for experienced users who require more customization options.

  5. Security: Apache HTTP Server is widely acknowledged for its robust security features and has a large community of developers who regularly release security updates and patches. XAMPP, while secure, may require additional configuration and precautions to ensure the security of the web server and its components.

  6. Development Environment: XAMPP is often used as a development environment, providing developers with an all-in-one solution for testing and deploying web applications. Apache HTTP Server, on the other hand, is commonly used in production environments and may require additional configuration for development purposes.

In summary, Apache HTTP Server is a powerful and widely-used open-source web server software that enables hosting and serving websites and web applications on various platforms, providing features like HTTP/HTTPS support, virtual hosting, and modular architecture for extensibility. XAMPP, on the other hand, is an open-source cross-platform web server solution that bundles Apache HTTP Server with other tools like MySQL, PHP, and Perl, offering a complete development environment for building and testing web applications locally on a single machine.

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Advice on Apache HTTP Server, XAMPP

Hari
Hari

Mar 3, 2020

Needs advice

I was in a situation where I have to configure 40 RHEL servers 20 each for Apache HTTP Server and Tomcat server. My task was to

  1. configure LVM with required logical volumes, format and mount for HTTP and Tomcat servers accordingly.
  2. Install apache and tomcat.
  3. Generate and apply selfsigned certs to http server.
  4. Modify default ports on Tomcat to different ports.
  5. Create users on RHEL for application support team.
  6. other administrative tasks like, start, stop and restart HTTP and Tomcat services.

I have utilized the power of ansible for all these tasks, which made it easy and manageable.

419k views419k
Comments
greg00m
greg00m

Mar 9, 2020

Needs advice

I am diving into web development, both front and back end. I feel comfortable with administration, scripting and moderate coding in bash, Python and C++, but I am also a Windows fan (i love inner conflict). What are the votes on web servers? IIS is expensive and restrictive (has Windows adoption of open source changed this?) Apache has the history but seems to be at the root of most of my Infosec issues, and I know nothing about nginx (is it too new to rely on?). And no, I don't know what I want to do on the web explicitly, but hosting and data storage (both cloud and tape) are possibilities.
Ready, aim fire!

766k views766k
Comments
StackShare
StackShare

May 29, 2019

Needs advice

From a StackShare Community member: "We are a LAMP shop currently focused on improving web performance for our customers. We have made many front-end optimizations and now we are considering replacing Apache with nginx. I was wondering if others saw a noticeable performance gain or any other benefits by switching."

725k views725k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Apache HTTP Server
Apache HTTP Server
XAMPP
XAMPP

The Apache HTTP Server is a powerful and flexible HTTP/1.1 compliant web server. Originally designed as a replacement for the NCSA HTTP Server, it has grown to be the most popular web server on the Internet.

It consists mainly of the Apache HTTP Server, MariaDB database, and interpreters for scripts written in the PHP and Perl programming languages.

Statistics
GitHub Stars
3.8K
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Forks
1.2K
GitHub Forks
-
Stacks
64.5K
Stacks
143
Followers
22.8K
Followers
272
Votes
1.4K
Votes
6
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 479
    Web server
  • 305
    Most widely-used web server
  • 217
    Virtual hosting
  • 148
    Fast
  • 138
    Ssl support
Cons
  • 4
    Hard to set up
Pros
  • 6
    Easy set up and installation of files

What are some alternatives to Apache HTTP Server, XAMPP?

NGINX

NGINX

nginx [engine x] is an HTTP and reverse proxy server, as well as a mail proxy server, written by Igor Sysoev. According to Netcraft nginx served or proxied 30.46% of the top million busiest sites in Jan 2018.

Unicorn

Unicorn

Unicorn is an HTTP server for Rack applications designed to only serve fast clients on low-latency, high-bandwidth connections and take advantage of features in Unix/Unix-like kernels. Slow clients should only be served by placing a reverse proxy capable of fully buffering both the the request and response in between Unicorn and slow clients.

Microsoft IIS

Microsoft IIS

Internet Information Services (IIS) for Windows Server is a flexible, secure and manageable Web server for hosting anything on the Web. From media streaming to web applications, IIS's scalable and open architecture is ready to handle the most demanding tasks.

Apache Tomcat

Apache Tomcat

Apache Tomcat powers numerous large-scale, mission-critical web applications across a diverse range of industries and organizations.

Passenger

Passenger

Phusion Passenger is a web server and application server, designed to be fast, robust and lightweight. It takes a lot of complexity out of deploying web apps, adds powerful enterprise-grade features that are useful in production, and makes administration much easier and less complex.

Gunicorn

Gunicorn

Gunicorn is a pre-fork worker model ported from Ruby's Unicorn project. The Gunicorn server is broadly compatible with various web frameworks, simply implemented, light on server resources, and fairly speedy.

Jetty

Jetty

Jetty is used in a wide variety of projects and products, both in development and production. Jetty can be easily embedded in devices, tools, frameworks, application servers, and clusters. See the Jetty Powered page for more uses of Jetty.

lighttpd

lighttpd

lighttpd has a very low memory footprint compared to other webservers and takes care of cpu-load. Its advanced feature-set (FastCGI, CGI, Auth, Output-Compression, URL-Rewriting and many more) make lighttpd the perfect webserver-software for every server that suffers load problems.

Swoole

Swoole

It is an open source high-performance network framework using an event-driven, asynchronous, non-blocking I/O model which makes it scalable and efficient.

Puma

Puma

Unlike other Ruby Webservers, Puma was built for speed and parallelism. Puma is a small library that provides a very fast and concurrent HTTP 1.1 server for Ruby web applications.

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