[theone]

If you have node-static installed.

  npm install -g node-static
  # serve up the current directory
  $ static
  serving "." at http://127.0.0.1:8080

More at https://github.com/cloudhead/node-static

[adduc]

Similarly, if PHP 5.4 (or greater) is installed:

    php -S 127.0.0.1:8080

[DarkStar851]

This my defacto, PHP is installed on all the Linux servers I manage, mostly Debian/Ubuntu with DotDeb repos. You could probably get nc to pipe the output of php-cli for older PHP installs.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3940046/can-i-use-netcat-... seems to have a basic example.

[prezjordan]

With built-in caching to boot!