I just learned how to change the location of Apache's www root folder and then restart apache...
- Edit /etc/apache2/sites-available/default
- Change the "DocumentRoot" value from "/var/www' to the new root folder (i.e. "/var/www/joomla15")
- Save the changes.
- Restart Apache from the Ubuntu command line...
> sudo /usr/sbin/apache2ctl -k graceful