Starting and stopping server with a desktop shortcut

Solution 1:

Without being clever, you can create two launchers for your desktop to start and stop. If you want to sink more time into this you could write a script for a single launcher to toggle on/off, but I'll leave that up to you.

1. Load a terminal and run gnome-desktop-item-edit --create-new $HOME/Desktop. If you're using something older than 11.10, you might be able to right click the desktop and just click New Launcher.

2. Give it a name like "Turn LAMP server Off", select a nice icon, don't worry about the comment.

3. For the command, you want something like this:

   gksu /opt/lampp/lampp stop
   

4. Click OK, test it out and then rinse and repeat for the start version.