Webhost

If you have a reputable internet service provider or webhost, much of the spam that would otherwise come your way should be stopped before it even reaches your computer.

I assembled my servers and shipped them to a facility in Chicago called BBN Planet. They were in the business of selling physical space in small, medium, and large chunks to webhosts.

So the happiest solution possible is to find out that gd is already installed, and PHP already has gd support enabled (whether that’s due to the diligence of your webhost or because the PHP you installed by yourself had it included).