Installing Joomla on Ubuntu

I am trying to locally install joomla on my laptop. I have apache2 installed and working. When I go to localhost:8080 I get to the Joomla's install page. This is what I see

PHP Version >= 4.3.10   Yes   
- Zlib Compression Support  Yes   
- XML Support   Yes   
- MySQL Support     No   
MB Language is Default  Yes   
MB String Overload Off  Yes   
configuration.php Writable  No

So.. some basic questions. How do I enable MySQL support? I have MySQL 5.1.49 installed on the machine already and I am using it with a rails set up so it is installed and working. It may have something to do wi开发者_如何学运维th mod_sql, but I can't find any info regarding that online.

My other question is how do I make configuration.php writeable?

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Much better than installing MySQL on its own, use the specialized package installer TaskSel. This acts like apt, but installs and configures for specific tasks. Run sudo tasksel install lamp-server. Edit: you may also check that you have 'libapache2-mod-php5' installed.

As to permissions, if you have the directory /var/www/joomla then cd /var/www and then sudo chown -R www-data joomla/. This is how you allow the files to be owned by the web server and not root. Should fix it.