How to Install PHP 7.4 on Debian 13

To install PHP 7.4 on Debian 13, follow the steps below.

Step 1 : Update the package list and upgrade existing packages.

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

Step 2 : Install the required packages to securely add external repositories.

sudo apt install -y gnupg lsb-release apt-transport-https ca-certificates wget

Step 3 : Add the official GPG key to verify packages from the SURY PHP repository.

wget -O /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/php.gpg https://packages.sury.org/php/apt.gpg

Step 4 : Add the SURY PHP repository to your system.

echo "deb https://packages.sury.org/php/ $(lsb_release -sc) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/php.list

Step 5 : Update APT after adding the new repository.

sudo apt update

Step 6 : Install PHP 7.4 and its core components.

sudo apt install -y php7.4 php7.4-cli php7.4-fpm

Step 7 : Install popular PHP extensions commonly required by web applications.

sudo apt install php7.4-{mysql,curl,xsl,gd,common,xml,zip,xsl,soap,bcmath,mbstring,gettext,imagick}

• mysql: Enables PHP to connect to MySQL/MariaDB databases
• curl: Allows PHP to make HTTP requests to APIs and external services
• xsl: Transforms XML documents using XSLT
• gd: Provides image manipulation features such as resizing and cropping
• common: Contains common PHP files required by PHP
• xml: Enables XML parsing and processing
• zip: Allows creating and extracting ZIP archives
• soap: Supports SOAP-based web services
• bcmath: Provides arbitrary precision mathematics functions
• mbstring: Handles multibyte character encoding (UTF-8 support)
• gettext: Enables localization and translation
• imagick: Advanced image processing using ImageMagick

Step 8 : Verify that PHP 7.4 is installed correctly.

php -v

You should see output showing PHP 7.4.x.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed PHP 7.4 on Debian 13.