linux mint and lamp or xampp

[lesh]

Does anyone use linux mint and have a lamp setup for GS work? I recently abandoned windows for mint and it's good except that xampp and lamp and file permissions are a total mare. I had to abandon local working and work on a web server just to get the job done and still after weeks I am unable to get a reliable and useable localhost under xampp. 

I switched to xampp on mint after retiring windows XP.

The problem seemed was that I copied GS to a directory in localhost but could not run it via the browser unless I was logged in as root. It looked like the folder in the localhost www directory was effectively owned by the server and so as user 'lesh' looking via the browser I got 403-forbidden error as only the server was allowed run them. If I ftp'ed them into there as I would online it was OK.

I think the solution was for user 'lesh' to join the www-data group with permission to run files in there.

I found useful info that steered me in the right direction in and article I found for setting up a server on Raspberry Pi after searching for something like "xampp permissions on linux".
 
If I find the information link(s) I will post here.

Hopefully not adding to the confusion - les howarth