BitNami: Oh the wonderful things you do

Open source software is great. I use a lot of it. I contribute to some of it, and I overwhelmingly support its use whenever possible (and reasonable). That said, a lot of open source software today is linux based. This is only natural because there are so many variations of Linux designed to suit every user and they’re almost all entirely free to download, install, and use on a daily basis.

However, for someone who works in a Microsoft shop, getting your hands on this great software can sometimes be a pain. A lot of open source web apps were written in PHP and designed for Apache, but have you tried installing Apache and configuring a web app designed for the LAMP stack recently? While not incredibly difficult, it’s mildly annoying to the point that I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone frequently. Furthermore, the added dependencies of PHP, MySQL, and the headaches associated with the various version requirements can make installing these apps on Windows a real pain at times.

Enter BitNami.

This group takes popular open source packages like MediaWiki and Drupal and packages them with their required components (Apache, PHP, MySQL, etc..) into an easy to install distribution for multiple platforms. Just the other day I installed the MediaWiki app on our Windows development server and I have to say, it was a pleasure doing so. The entire process was streamlined and my new wiki was up and running in less than 5 minutes. I didn’t have to worry about the latest version of apache and whether the package I downloaded came with mod_php, nor did I have to worry about downloading PHP and enabling the MySQL support (two of the biggest hurdles I’ve had in the past). Everything installed right into my C:\Program Files\BitNami MediaWiki Stack folder just like I told it and functions pefectly.

I plan to experiment with some of the other packages BitNami has created, and I sincerely hope they (and encourage them to) continue to develop these packages for folks like me. BitNami, you rock!