If I am understanding your question correctly, you just want to be able to test pages on your local machine correct? If this is what you want to do then its simple under Linux. If you have apache installed and PHP installed, try this in your webbrowser on you Linux box.
http://127.0.0.1/
or
http://localhost/
Your web directory should be in /var/www/html/ (I think) under Redhat. Put all your PHP files there.
then just
http://127.0.0.1/test.php
(FYI 127.0.0.1 is a loopback to your machine).
Hope this Helps!