I offer another solution: XAMPP

http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-linux.html

XAMPP allows you to quickly install the Apache Server, PHP (with a choice
of using PHP 4 or PHP 5), and Mysql all in 1 go.

I've done the install on 2 separate machines
and so far it works great. I've also (in the past) done the same
using Synaptic and it worked too.

XAMPP is very easy to set up, well-documented, and you can view
the commands by which to start/stop/restart your Apache/MySQL server(s).