Question

It seems lots of answers to questions about getting started in web development include “install XAMPP“, even when the platform is Windows. Meanwhile, WampServer doesn’t seem to be mentioned often. I’ve used both XAMPP and WampServer (admittedly, WampServer much more) and think they are both fine. So, is XAMPP preferred? If it is, why?

I realize that Perl comes with XAMPP, but this bias seems to exist even when PHP is the only programming language in question.

This question seems related, but the answers don’t really get to the core of why XAMPP seems preferred over WAMP. (And is also a bit stale.)

Update (May 30, 2012): This article, points to more packages to try out. AMPSS was the author’s choice for ease of use and extensibility. However, one of the more specialized BitNami stacks may be better for some situations. WampServer and XAMPP still got good marks.

Answer 1

While I appreciate the effort of those who answered, I have not seen something directly addressing the issue. Thus, I’ll mention some thoughts I’ve had on the topic:

• One possibility is that XAMPP is better known – or at least what people learned of first. While I heard of WampServer long before XAMPP, that may not be the most common experience.
• I believe that every time I’ve looked, XAMPP has had more recent versions of the included software.
• WampServer doesn’t provide much more than Apache, MySQL, and PHP – just phpMyAdmin and SQLite, I believe. XAMPP provides phpMyAdmin, FileZilla FTP server, and Mercury Mail. Also, in spite of somewhat excluding this in the question, XAMPP includes Perl while Wampserver does not. So if Perl is needed/liked by the person making the recommendation, it seems likely that they will recommend XAMPP over WampServer.