I was going to make a fake one and try and be funny but I think my real results are amusing enough. I thought I wasn't bad a typing but it seems I must spend most of my time correcting all the mistakes I make.

I've bookmarked your ubuntu server setup, justice. Had it there a while. I'm tempted to go through all your steps with the intention of then setting something up on Linode, as that seems like a good way of getting to grips with hosting beyond the comforts of cPanel. It's just having the time to spare.

I think you are spot on with Silverstripe. I'm not too hot with php so I can't start thinking in terms of modifying a cms in that way. Wish I could but time doesn't allow that either. Having said that I must waste days trying to force a set of plugins to do what a client needs, so I'm talking rubbish really.

As for AMPPS, I see what you mean, 40, but it's still actually more long winded to use amps than it is wamps, in my case, at least. I did go through all of the config panels and menus with ampps and they aren't as convenient as the wamp system tray and a couple of desktop shortcuts, well, again, not for me. Anything that reduces the number of times I have to click tends to win for me, and that's wamp. I've got a system that I can fault find with, moving to amps might mean I'll miss something... maybe. I tend to swap the virtual servers around a lot, changing the domains and databases so quickly editing a text file is all I need - I wasn't sure if ampps would follow what I was doing so didn't give it much thought after that.

Edit:
Just thought I'd quickly mention another thing about wamp. You can use different versions of php, apache and mysql with it, all accessible via the system tray. I've not seen this available elsewhere. I admit you probably would never need it but I've a few sites that I have to keep swapping versions around, this is all done with just a few clicks with wamp.