Installing PHP 5.6 on Xenial (16.04) [duplicate]

Remove all the stock php packages

List installed php packages with dpkg -l | grep php| awk '{print $2}' |tr "\n" " " then remove unneeded packages with sudo aptitude purge your_packages_here or if you want to directly remove them all use :

sudo apt-get purge `dpkg -l | grep php| awk '{print $2}' |tr "\n" " "`

Add the PPA

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php

If you get add-apt-repository: command not found run the following command first :

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common

Install your PHP Version

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install php5.6

You can install php5.6 modules too for example

sudo apt-get install php5.6-mbstring php5.6-mcrypt php5.6-mysql php5.6-xml

Verify your version

If you have installed php5.6-cli

sudo php -v

If you don't have php5.6-cli, put this on a .php file

<?php 
      //outputs php configuration info
      phpinfo(); 
?>

Run the following commands:

$ sudo apt-get install python-software-properties
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install -y php5.6

Check your PHP Version

php -v