Can this be installed by a noob on to a computer and not to a server? Can I run this from a USB stick or just from my computer ?

Back on Urban Workbench similar question:

This software looks great, what do I need to get it running? Can I run it on my home PC?

Here are the instructions how to set everything up and running on your home computer. We'll use XAMPP Lite to set up that environment (it can be run even from USB):

• Go to Apache Friends and download XAMPP Lite. It's a 43MB ZIP file (whats lite about that!?)
• Extract the content of downloaded archive on your local disk. In the readme file it is recommended to extract it on root of some drive (C:, D:, W: or whatever) so you'll end up with something like: C:/xampplite
• Open C:/xampplite/mysql/bin/my.cnf in any text editor (Notepad will do). Find this:

  skip-innodb 
  # Uncomment the following if you are using InnoDB tables 
  #innodb_data_home_dir = /xampplite/mysql/data/
  #innodb_data_file_path = ibdata1:10M:autoextend 
  #innodb_log_group_home_dir = /xampplite/mysql/data/
  #innodb_log_arch_dir = /xampplite/mysql/data/
  # You can set .._buffer_pool_size up to 50 - 80 % 
  # of RAM but beware of setting memory usage too high 
  #set-variable = innodb_buffer_pool_size=16M 
  #set-variable = innodb_additional_mem_pool_size=2M 
  # Set .._log_file_size to 25 % of buffer pool size 
  #set-variable = innodb_log_file_size=5M 
  #set-variable = innodb_log_buffer_size=8M 
  #innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit=1 
  #set-variable = innodb_lock_wait_timeout=50

And replace it with:

  #skip-innodb 
  # Uncomment the following if you are using InnoDB tables 
  innodb_data_home_dir = C:/xampplite/mysql/data/
  innodb_data_file_path = ibdata1:10M:autoextend 
  innodb_log_group_home_dir = C:/xampplite/mysql/data/
  innodb_log_arch_dir = C:/xampplite/mysql/data/
  # You can set .._buffer_pool_size up to 50 - 80 % 
  # of RAM but beware of setting memory usage too high 
  set-variable = innodb_buffer_pool_size=16M 
  set-variable = innodb_additional_mem_pool_size=2M 
  #Set .._log_file_size to 25 % of buffer pool size 
  set-variable = innodb_log_file_size=5M 
  set-variable = innodb_log_buffer_size=8M 
  innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit=1 
  set-variable = innodb_lock_wait_timeout=50

• If you are not installing on USB you should also run setup_xampp.bat file.
• To actually run environment execute apache_start.bat and mysql_start.bat files. They will open console windows. Don't close them, that are servers you need to run activeCollab.
• Download activeCollab 0.7 RC1 (or any other activeCollab version, it should work the same). Extract its content to C:/xampplite/htdocs/. You'll end up with folder like C:/xampplite/htdocs/activecollab/. Fell free to rename activeCollab folder to anything you like (I prefer collab for instance).
• Open http://localhost/phpmyadmin/ and create a new database - activecollab. You'll find a small form in phpMyAdmin that lets you do this (Craete new database form).
• Go with your browser to http://localhost/activecollab/public/install/ and follow the installation steps. Setup will require some info from you. This will do the trick:

  Host name: localhost
  Username: root
  Password: (leave empty)
  Database name: activecollab
  Absolute URL: http://localhost/activecollab/

• Submit. Installer should set up activeCollab and let you know that everything went well.
• Go to http://localhost/activecollab/. You will get a dialog that will let you create administrator user and insert your company name. When your done with this you'll be able to login to activeCollab and start managing your projects.

That should be it. You can find more information about setting up XAMPP Lite on XAMPP website. Please note that XAMPP is built to be development environment, not production environment. Don't for get to read a Security section of readme file!

Similar instructions apply to installation on any other platform, just use Apache + PHP + MySQL package made for your operating system (for Mac you’d us MAMP or XAMPP for Mac for instance).

Thanks to whooven for mentioning XAMPP Lite on the forum.