XAMPP is
  The program is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License and acts as a free web server capable of serving dynamic pages. XAMPP is available for Microsoft Windows, Linux, Solaris, and Mac OS X, and is mainly used for web development projects.
meaning of the name
    * X (meaning cross-platform)
    * Apache HTTP Server
    * MySQL
    * PHP
    * Perl

you can download XAMPP with clicking here 

Important: If you download these files on a Windows system and you're running McAfee virus scanner you may get a false positive virus warning. This is a problem with McAfee and gzip-compressed files, it should be ignored.

After you download, follow these steps to install.
       ##1. Go to a Linux shell and login as the system administrator root:
        command : su
       ##2. Extract the downloaded archive file to /opt:
        command : tar xvfz xampp-linux-1.7.2.tar.gz -C /opt
       
    important
  - Do not change the path "/opt" to different one. because it won't work.
  - Please use only this command to install XAMPP. DON'T use any Microsoft Windows tools to extract the archive, it won't work.
  - already installed XAMPP versions get overwritten by this command.
    XAMPP is now installed below the /opt/lampp directory.


#Then you can start xampp on linux with terminal like this..
    command :/opt/lampp/lampp start
    you can start xampp, when you have not logged as the system administrator root, like this...
    command : sudo /opt/lampp/lampp start

you can see a result on terminal like
Starting XAMPP 1.7.2...
LAMPP: Starting Apache...
LAMPP: Starting MySQL...
LAMPP started.
when it is starting..

now you have already installed and started xampp.

# then goto your web browser and type on address bar "http://localhost"

Then you can manage your localhost as you need..

some important commands

start Starts XAMPP.
stop Stops XAMPP.
restart Stops and starts XAMPP.
startapache Starts only the Apache.
startssl Starts the Apache SSL support. This command activates the SSL support permanently, e.g. if you restarts XAMPP in the future SSL will stay activated.
startmysql Starts only the MySQL database.
startftp Starts the ProFTPD server. Via FTP you can upload files for your web server (user "nobody", password "lampp"). This command activates the ProFTPD permanently, e.g. if you restarts XAMPP in the future FTP will stay activated.
stopapache Stops the Apache.
stopssl Stops the Apache SSL support. This command deactivates the SSL support permanently, e.g. if you restarts XAMPP in the future SSL will stay deactivated.
stopmysql Stops the MySQL database.
stopftp Stops the ProFTPD server. This command deactivates the ProFTPD permanently, e.g. if you restarts XAMPP in the future FTP will stay deactivated.
security Starts a small security check programm.