<p>I am using xampp on Windows, but I would like to use something closer to my server setup.</p>

<p><a href="http://phpimpact.wordpress.com/2008/05/24/virtual-appliances-lamp-development-made-easy/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Federico Cargnelutti tutorial</a> explains how to setup LAMP VMWARE appliance; it is a great introduction to VMware appliances, but one of the commands was not working and it doesn't describe how to change the keyboard layout and the timezone.</p>

<p>ps: the commands are easy to find but I don't want to look for them each time I reinstall the server. I am using this question as a reminder.</p>

Assuming you have VMware workstation, VMware player or anything that can run vmware appliance, you just need to:
Download, unzip
Ubuntu 8.04 Server
and start the virtual machine.
Update ubuntu and set the layout and the timezone:
```
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup
sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata
sudo vim /etc/network/interfaces
```
set a fixed IP
(Optional).
install apache+mysql+php:
```
sudo tasksel install lamp-server
```