Apache, PHP, and MySQL are the fundamental components required for web development. However, installing them individually on your system can be time-consuming, and configuring them can be challenging, especially for beginners. To overcome these difficulties, you can utilize applications like VertrigoServ.

Uniform Server (full name: The Uniform Server, formerly called Mini Server, AKA: UniServerZ, UniServer Zero, Uniform Server Zero) is a free, open-source, easy-to-use and lightweight WAMP (Apache + MySQL + PHP + Perl) local server solution for Windows, specially made for local web development.

Using the three free, open-source and original system components (PHP, MySQL, and phpMyAdmin) to develop, test, and deploy Web applications locally is almost the only best option available at the moment. Thereinto, Apache Web server and PHP hypertext preprocessor are preinstalled on Mac. But they are not enabled by default, and the pre-installed version of PHP lacks many utility features. The MySQL needs to be installed and configured separately. Unless you are able to expertly use command lines in Terminal, installing the one-stop solution MAMP (PRO) is much simpler and more efficient.

If you're a web developer or learning web programming languages, you must found that: every time want to perform local debugging, testing for your web app/code on a new OS or another PC, you has to set up and configure the whole AMP (Apache, PHP, MySQL) web development environments from scratch, which is absolutely boring.

As a matter of experience, many people (especially for personal webmasters) have deeply understood the installation of Apache server on localhost is definitely not an easy thing, not to mention adding a MySQL, PHP or Perl component, harder. Nevertheless, luckily there are tools similar to XAMPP integrate frequently-used development environments into one package.