When comparing Nginx vs XAMPP, the Slant community recommends Nginx for most people. In the question“What are the best cross-platform lightweight HTTP servers?” Nginx is ranked 2nd while XAMPP is ranked 3rd.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Free and open source
Pro Fast and built for scalability
Nginx is event-driven, asynchronous, non-blocking and single threaded (one master process + worker processes). This allows nginx to be manage resources more efficiently compared to thread-based models (like Apache).
Pro Lightweight
Nginx offers a more basic set of functions out of the box compared most web servers. Extra functionality can be added via modules.
Pro Highly efficient memory use
Pro Highly efficient CPU use
Pro Advanced load balancing and caching
Pro Event Based Request Handling
Does not fork/thread per request.
Pro Easily configurable
Configuration files are concise and simple.
Pro Smooth installation with minimal configuration required
Port 443 is in use from Skype. You can change the port in Skype.
Pro Multi-platform
XAMPP runs on OS X, Linux and Windows.
Pro Clean and functional interface
Cons
Con Bloated
Comes with mail server, FTP server, accelerator, web-dav, ssl out of the box, etc.
Con doesnt has phpselector
Need downgrade to use php5