Laravel 5.1 will be the first LTS version of Laravel and it was just announced that the minimal requirement for PHP would be version >=5.5.9. So as I was checking my own environments, I thought it might be fun to list the default PHP versions for most popular Linux distributions. Please note that these the PHP versions installed out of the box without configuring external repositories. Some distros like the Amazon AMI do actually provide the packages for PHP 5.6 but you have to ask those specifically.
| Distro | PHP version |
|---|---|
| Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS | 5.5.9 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 7.1 (Maipo) | 5.4.16 |
| CentOS Linux release 7.1.1503 (Core) | 5.4.16 |
| Debian GNU/Linux 8.0 (jessie) | 5.6.7-1 |
| Amazon Linux AMI 2015.03 | 5.3.29 |
| Fedora release 21 (Twenty One) | 5.6.9 |
If there is some distro that you would like to see in this list, please let me know.
So here are links on how to upgrade your PHP version to a newer version on those distributions that ship too old PHP version by default.
http://www.if-not-true-then-false.com/2011/install-nginx-php-fpm-on-fedora-centos-red-hat-rhel/
http://serverfault.com/questions/566527/update-php-with-yum-on-amazon-linux