Getting Started with Laravel on Ubuntu

November 30, 2016 | programming | php | ubuntu |

I’ve really been digging Laravel lately. Especially due to the wonderful documentation and amazing resources provided by Laracasts. Below are some notes on getting going on a local Ubuntu install. I am running Ubuntu 16.10 and these notes assume a fresh install.

Install PHP 7.0 and additional dependencies

sudo apt install php7.0 php7.0-zip php7.0-mbstring phpunit

Install Composer (Globally)

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

Install the Laravel CLI (Globally)

composer global require "laravel/installer"

Add globally installed composer commands to the PATH

Add the following to the end of your ~/.bashrc file

# Add Composer to the PATH
export PATH=$HOME/.config/composer/vendor/bin:$PATH

You can either source the ~/.bashrc file or open a new terminal window.

Verify everything works

You can do this by running laravel new test_project. Then go to the directory where the new test_project is created with cd test_project. Once you are in the new project directory install all local dependencies with composer install and then run it with php artisan serve. I ran into an issue right away that had to do with the APP_KEY. The error manifested itself as:

The only supported ciphers are AES-128-CBC and AES-256-CBC with the correct key lengths.

A great explanation is shown here but the steps to get a fully functional base install going are:

# Copy the .env.example file to .env cp .env.example .env

Generate App Key

php artisan key:generate

Now if you run php artisan serve you will see a fully running Laravel app. Happy Hacking!

Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.

Check out some more stuff to read down below.

Most popular posts this month

Recent Favorite Blog Posts

This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.

No-One Escapes the Permanent Underclass from Fernando Borretti
Is it ethical to use AI? from charity.wtf
The logical destination of LLMs from Andy Bell
Revised rules of engineering leadership. from Irrational Exuberance
The circus freaks of open source from Drew DeVault's blog
Clanker: A Word For The Machine from Armin Ronacher's Thoughts and Writings
I ran a half-marathon! from gluecko.se
My Running Tips from Kevin Bell's Blog

Articles from blogs I follow around the net

My last 5 books - July 2026 edition

My last 5 books - July 2026 edition This is a new feature in which I will copy and paste my recent book reviews from my books page These are the last 5 books I have read. I will update in a month or 2 when I've read 5 more. I'm Starting to Worry About this...

via O'DonnellWeb July 12, 2026

“Animating something and animating something well are two very different things.”

From Jakub Krehel, a new blog post about self constraint in the era when AI makes it easy to ignore constraints altogether. My caveat is that the post doesn’t fully come together for me – jumping from AI to animations and then back to AI the way the author...

via Unsung July 12, 2026

Generated and suppressed demand.

Eight years ago, I wrote about my theory of restoring struggling teams, which came down to four steps: A team is falling behind if each week their backlog is longer than the week before. Solve by hiring more. A team is treading water if they’re able to get...

via Irrational Exuberance July 11, 2026

Generated by openring