on the ubuntu site I followed the following instructions:
To install the default LAMP stack in Ubuntu 10.04 and above
First install tasksel...

$ sudo apt-get install tasksel
... and then the LAMP stack:

$ sudo tasksel install lamp-server

It looked like it installed. I don't know what to do now. On Windows you just find the xampp folder and put stuff you want to test in htdocs folder and there's a control panel for starting and stopping services. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places but I don't see a xampp folder let alond a htdocs folder and I have no idea how to start and stop Apachee, PHP or MySQL. Hopefully someone here has been through this and knows what I need to do next.

If this is installed on a local machine, did you enter in your web browser: http://localhost/index.html?
You should get a page which saye "It Works".
The files would go in the /var/www/ directory where you can create directories/files etc...

I'm not really sure if that is all you are asking, if not more details.