`apt install apache2 php libapache2-mod-php` will perfectly set up Apache with PHP all Debian-based distros. What's complex about that?

And if you really need php-fpm (which you should, anyway), at least in Ubuntu (never set up on other distro), the boilerplate nginx config is there.

How bad will be running the built-in web server on public network?

You meant PHP built-in server (php -S)? It doesn't even support concurrent connection.

Neither mod_php nor php-fpm is related to the built-in server though. Both are designed for production.

Built-in web server has experimental concurrent support since PHP 7.4

> Set the PHP_CLI_SERVER_WORKERS environment variable to the number of desired workers before starting the server

https://www.php.net/manual/en/features.commandline.webserver...

This has been debugged for 20+ years now. Not bad at all.

I have set up PHP on Apache (both php-fpm and mod_php) and Nginx countless times on different Linux distros and never ran into problems. It might have to do with the fact that I have so much experience with web servers but it takes me only a few minutes to set it up on any Ubuntu/Debian based system (download time of the packages excluded).

PHP has to be one of the easiest set ups. Even more so nowadays if you're just grabbing a docker image...

If you're on Windows you can just install XAMPP and it "just works".

Monstrous? It couldn't be any more simple, if you even have to go through the process of setting up PHP. Hosting options that support PHP are two a penny, probably literally.