{"slug": "apache", "name": "Apache", "category": "other", "category_name": "Other software", "description": "", "recommenders": 2, "commenters": 6, "warners": 2, "score": 0.457, "rising": 0.67, "first": "2025-11-15", "latest": "2026-10-13", "why": "Apache was more than adequate for what I was doing, I had no issues with it in the past, and the setup was dead simple.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 3, "compare": 0, "warn": 2}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0], "listed": false, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "Apache was more than adequate for what I was doing, I had no issues with it in the past, and the setup was dead simple.", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Apache", "Apache HTTP Server"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 795389712, "item_id": 49711857, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49711857", "by": "Suzuran", "date": "2026-09-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "When Apache became available we switched to it out of spite.", "excerpt": "Netscape died because we all hated it. Back when Apache didn't exist yet, we were forced to run Netscape's server. (Even if Apache did exist, we didn't have the $20K per-seat license fee for DEC's C compiler so we wouldn't have been able to compile it anyway). Netscape's license terms were such that we had to open our books to them. They would read through all of our transactions and decide how much we would have to ", "context": "", "use_case": "web server", "switched_from": "Netscape", "story": "LG says we're fake news [video]"}, {"id": 775136896, "item_id": 48446056, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48446056", "by": "al_borland", "date": "2026-06-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The current setup has been running for 10 years now with minimal maintenance.", "excerpt": "That\u2019s not really an issue for me. I use this setup for small internal stuff. It might have 300 users at most, and they aren\u2019t making constant requests. I run it on a small VM and only run into issues when someone dumps in so much data that PHP runs out of memory, which isn\u2019t an Apache issue. And that memory issue doesn\u2019t take down the site or server, it\u2019s just the one request that dies. That used to happen maybe 5 t", "context": "runs small internal tool for ~300 users", "use_case": "internal PHP tool web server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Learn PHP in 2026 (Yes, Really)"}, {"id": 775094320, "item_id": 48443395, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48443395", "by": "al_borland", "date": "2026-06-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Apache was more than adequate for what I was doing, I had no issues with it in the past, and the setup was dead simple.", "excerpt": "I generally just use Apache. A classic LAMP setup, if a DB is needed for anything. If no DB is needed, I guess it\u2019s just LAP This is pretty quick and painless to setup. SLES had a single command for it back when I used it, if I remember correctly. I currently have a simple Ansible playbook for it on RHEL. It\u2019s certainly much more straightforward than deploying Flask to production, especially if just using the default", "context": "", "use_case": "web server for PHP", "switched_from": "", "story": "Learn PHP in 2026 (Yes, Really)"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 801130336, "item_id": 50070646, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50070646", "by": "Izkata", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "warn", "quote": "It was so weird and I couldn't find it in the documentation", "excerpt": "Sorry, httpd. It was so weird and I couldn't find it in the documentation (and a different server we used on dev didn't do it, which was how the bug made it live) that I pulled down the official source code and found where it was happening so I could explain it to my team. I'm pretty sure it was all 5xx but can't remember for certain. This was back in 2019, with a much older project, and I'm pretty sure that part of ", "context": "", "use_case": "web server", "switched_from": "", "story": "The gap in shared understanding of LLM capability is widening"}, {"id": 784532420, "item_id": 49033276, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49033276", "by": "austin-cheney", "date": "2026-07-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Apache and NGINX busted pissed me off when creating simple ultra fast proxies, especially around web sockets", "excerpt": "My hobby is self-hosting. * I have a dedicated server at the house where I run nearly a dozen services via docker compose. * I wrote my own audio app for playing my self hosted mp3s because everything I found on the App Store was shit. I wanted something like Winamp: a simple media player followed by a playlist of thousands of items that works equally on desktop and iPhone. https://github.com/prettydiff/mp3-master-li", "context": "self-hosting hobbyist", "use_case": "web proxies", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Share Your Eccentric Hobby"}]}], "who": [{"by": "al_borland", "context": "runs small internal tool for ~300 users", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48446056", "date": "2026-06-08"}, {"by": "Bender", "context": "runs personal hobby nodes", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47161329", "date": "2026-02-25"}, {"by": "heikkilevanto", "context": "retired", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46268477", "date": "2025-12-14"}], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["web server", "web proxies", "internal php tool web server", "web server for php", "web server tuning", "hosting cgi apps"], "compared": [{"slug": "nginx", "name": "nginx", "co": 7, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "haproxy", "name": "HAProxy", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48397765", "title": "Learn PHP in 2026 (Yes, Really)", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50047422", "title": "The gap in shared understanding of LLM capability is widening", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49676324", "title": "LG says we're fake news [video]", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49021336", "title": "Ask HN: Share Your Eccentric Hobby", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47161270", "title": "Ask HN: Apache prefork under crawler load \u2013 main domains OK, subdomains fail", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46264491", "title": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"neutral": 1}, "2025-12": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-07": {"warn": 1}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-10": {"warn": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 801130336, "item_id": 50070646, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50070646", "by": "Izkata", "date": "2026-10-13", "stance": "warn", "quote": "It was so weird and I couldn't find it in the documentation", "excerpt": "Sorry, httpd. It was so weird and I couldn't find it in the documentation (and a different server we used on dev didn't do it, which was how the bug made it live) that I pulled down the official source code and found where it was happening so I could explain it to my team. I'm pretty sure it was all 5xx but can't remember for certain. This was back in 2019, with a much older project, and I'm pretty sure that part of ", "context": "", "use_case": "web server", "switched_from": "", "story": "The gap in shared understanding of LLM capability is widening"}, {"id": 795389712, "item_id": 49711857, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49711857", "by": "Suzuran", "date": "2026-09-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "When Apache became available we switched to it out of spite.", "excerpt": "Netscape died because we all hated it. Back when Apache didn't exist yet, we were forced to run Netscape's server. (Even if Apache did exist, we didn't have the $20K per-seat license fee for DEC's C compiler so we wouldn't have been able to compile it anyway). Netscape's license terms were such that we had to open our books to them. They would read through all of our transactions and decide how much we would have to ", "context": "", "use_case": "web server", "switched_from": "Netscape", "story": "LG says we're fake news [video]"}, {"id": 784532420, "item_id": 49033276, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49033276", "by": "austin-cheney", "date": "2026-07-24", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Apache and NGINX busted pissed me off when creating simple ultra fast proxies, especially around web sockets", "excerpt": "My hobby is self-hosting. * I have a dedicated server at the house where I run nearly a dozen services via docker compose. * I wrote my own audio app for playing my self hosted mp3s because everything I found on the App Store was shit. I wanted something like Winamp: a simple media player followed by a playlist of thousands of items that works equally on desktop and iPhone. https://github.com/prettydiff/mp3-master-li", "context": "self-hosting hobbyist", "use_case": "web proxies", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Share Your Eccentric Hobby"}, {"id": 775136896, "item_id": 48446056, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48446056", "by": "al_borland", "date": "2026-06-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "The current setup has been running for 10 years now with minimal maintenance.", "excerpt": "That\u2019s not really an issue for me. I use this setup for small internal stuff. It might have 300 users at most, and they aren\u2019t making constant requests. I run it on a small VM and only run into issues when someone dumps in so much data that PHP runs out of memory, which isn\u2019t an Apache issue. And that memory issue doesn\u2019t take down the site or server, it\u2019s just the one request that dies. That used to happen maybe 5 t", "context": "runs small internal tool for ~300 users", "use_case": "internal PHP tool web server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Learn PHP in 2026 (Yes, Really)"}, {"id": 775094320, "item_id": 48443395, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48443395", "by": "al_borland", "date": "2026-06-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Apache was more than adequate for what I was doing, I had no issues with it in the past, and the setup was dead simple.", "excerpt": "I generally just use Apache. A classic LAMP setup, if a DB is needed for anything. If no DB is needed, I guess it\u2019s just LAP This is pretty quick and painless to setup. SLES had a single command for it back when I used it, if I remember correctly. I currently have a simple Ansible playbook for it on RHEL. It\u2019s certainly much more straightforward than deploying Flask to production, especially if just using the default", "context": "", "use_case": "web server for PHP", "switched_from": "", "story": "Learn PHP in 2026 (Yes, Really)"}, {"id": 754581264, "item_id": 47161329, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47161329", "by": "Bender", "date": "2026-02-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I've gone through this exercise on my own personal hobby nodes long ago.", "excerpt": "I've gone through this exercise on my own personal hobby nodes long ago. In my case I was just on an under-powered node for the load but I made sure my rewrite rules were optimized in the virtualserver config vs .htaccess and that I closed all rules with a final L to cease processing rules when matches were found. I also jacked up all the worker/server limits as high as I could go for the memory in the node this was ", "context": "runs personal hobby nodes", "use_case": "web server tuning", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Apache prefork under crawler load \u2013 main domains OK, subdomains fail"}, {"id": 740295633, "item_id": 46268477, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46268477", "by": "heikkilevanto", "date": "2025-12-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "perl-based cgis under Apache, running on my home server/workstation", "excerpt": "Slowly degoogling my life. Switched to FastMail a while ago, it works. Have written a simple shopping and todo list web app, and a minimal photo gallery. All very simple, mostly for one user only: Myself. Using these as excuses to learn about coding with LLMs. As I have retired a few years ago, I can afford the time, and work with no stress or deadlines. Also slowly improving my beer tracker system. All this as perl-", "context": "retired", "use_case": "hosting CGI apps", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)"}, {"id": 735020321, "item_id": 45938770, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45938770", "by": "Bender", "date": "2025-11-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use both NGinx and Apache depending on what I am deploying", "excerpt": "As I understand, the popular consensus today is that nginx+php-fpm performs faster than apache even with the mpm_event process management enabled? This was certainly true long ago in Apache HTTPD 2.2. They completely rewrite APR and as of the 2.4 branch it was on par with Nginx. Some use Apache for a tighter integration with some modules such as PHP resulting is a slightly better security stance with PHP. Nginx makes", "context": "sysadmin", "use_case": "web server", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why is Apache still popular even as Nginx has proven its mettle on performance?"}]}