LAMPP is just an easy way of running apache with php, mysql and some other stuff. If you were not using LAMPP, you would have to install and configure these (or an alternate webserver) yourself.
So in general, no.
You don't have to run lampp on system startup. It's as simple as opening a command line and typing sudo /opt/lampp/lampp start
to start it, or sudo /opt/lampp/lampp stop
to stop it.
I'm using Gnome Do a lot, and have made some scripts to help me. I have put launchers in my application menu to run these scripts, and can therefore start them from Gnome Do.
The script to start lampp and show progress via notify-osd:
#!/usr/bin/python
import pynotify
import os
pynotify.init('Lampp loader')
imageURI = 'file:///opt/lampp/xampp.png'
notifyString = "Powering up lampp\n"
n = pynotify.Notification("lampp", notifyString, imageURI)
n.show()
f = os.popen('gksudo /opt/lampp/lampp start')
try:
for line in f:
notifyString += line
n.update("lampp",notifyString)
n.show()
finally:
f.close()
And the similar to stop lampp:
#!/usr/bin/python
import pynotify
import os
pynotify.init('Lampp loader')
imageURI = 'file:///opt/lampp/xampp.png'
notifyString = "Powering down lampp\n"
n = pynotify.Notification("lampp", notifyString, imageURI)
n.show()
f = os.popen('gksudo /opt/lampp/lampp stop')
try:
for line in f:
notifyString += line
n.update("lampp",notifyString)
n.show()
finally:
f.close()
Both require python and pynotify (sudo apt-get install python-notify
).
To create a launcher, simply right click on the Applications menu, select Edit Menus, select a category to the left, and click the New Item button to the right. Put the path to the script in the command field, and make sure the file is executable.