by Ken Task.
php.ini is initialization file for PHP. If you are installing Moodle on a *server* and downloaded the stable build tar.gz or .zip file found on
http://download.moodle.org/ that contains only moodle code (which runs under PHP).
Please see:
http://docs.moodle.org/24/en/Installing_Moodle
If attempting to install on a laptop/desktop for local development of courses, one could have downloaded a version for Windows or for MacOSX which does contain everything needed to run Moodle, including Apache, PHP, and MySQL.
http://download.moodle.org/macosx/
http://download.moodle.org/windows/
'spirit of sharing', Ken