I come from a windows environment, so i think its safe to say I'm totally new to Linux.

The reason I'm switching to Linux is because I would like to develop my PHP and MySQL skills in a more familiar environment, sure, I could download PHP and MySQL for Windows but I'd rather write scripts in the OS I'd be uploading to.

So I guess my question is: What Distro is best for developing these types of scripts in? Is there a distro that already comes with apache, php, mysql etc already installed or would I have to download them?

I'm not worried about games, though I would like to be able to connect to the internet, use email etc. And I need a distro that has a basic word processor installed, and a graphics program.

Any help is highly appreciated.

RussellG,
This thread may be of interest to you: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hp?threadid=22

I know Red Hat 7 comes with MySQL+PHP, not sure off the top of my head which others do (Ofcorse you can install it on any disto). What distro will you be uploading to?

Thanks for the reply, that thread helped out a lot. I am torn between slackware and suse, though I have Turbolinux, it was free with a magazine.

Uploading to? Sorry if this sounds stupid but does it matter what Linux distro you upload PHP and MySQL to? Shouldnt it work on all of them? Even if I work in a particular linux distro?

You said that you are trying Linux because you would like to write the scripts on the same OS that you are uploading to. I was just wondering what distro you were running on the production machine (thought maybe you would like to have the test box and the production box as similar as possible). MySQL/PHP will indeed work regardless of what distro you choose.