I've BTDT and it's tedious at times. Try this PPA: https://launchpad.net/~ondrej/+archive/php5 https://launchpad.net/~ondrej/+archive/php5 Fedora users have it

I've BTDT and it's tedious at times. Try this PPA: https://launchpad.net/~ondrej/+archive/php5 https://launchpad.net/~ondrej/+archive/php5 Fedora users have it easy, the packages there are mere days behind: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/php https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/php With a bit of experimenting you can easily do a network install of a headless Fedora/SL/CentOS in KVM using virt-install and a kickstart file. Use filesystem passthrough to access your source files, run php-fpm and configure its address as a backend in your web server. Keep SELinux enabled, but adjust it to your needs using setsebool if necessary.