Debian stable (Bullseye/11) PHP and Joomla

[IntnsRed]

Running a straight Debian stable (Bullseye/11) Joomla complains about PHP being too old. Can someone ELI5 me the tricks in upgrading/getting Joomla to run? (TIA)

I see from a forum search here that someone is running Debian 12/testing and Joomla, but I'd prefer to run the "stable" release of Debian.

[Per Yngve Berg]

Use Ubuntu. They have more recent versions than Debian.

[pe7er]

I used to use Debian myself. I switched to Ubuntu to have more recent versions of software.

When I used Debian I ran into the same issue with the outdated PHP version in their software repository.
However, you can add other repositories to your Debian 11 OS.
Use a search engine with keywords "install php 8 debian 11" for instructions.

[IntnsRed]

Ubuntu is not an option for me.

The reason I ask is that Debian 11's "php -v" reports PHP 7.4.33 (even though 8 and 8.2 are installed) but the Joomla technical requirements page says that 4.x requires only PHP 7.2.5 as a minimum (though 8 is recommended).

Thus, IMO Joomla should run -- or the technical requirements page needs to be updated/changed.

[pe7er]

The reason I ask is that Debian 11's "php -v" reports PHP 7.4.33 (even though 8 and 8.2 are installed)

Note that PHP on the command line (when you do "php -v") can be a different version than the PHP used by the webserver (Apache/Nginx)

[ceford]

I just spent 4 days updating Linux Mint and Macos versions on my test servers just so they could use the required versions of PHP 8 and MySQL 8 needed for Joomla 5 due for release in October. The Joomla update from 4 to 5 takes minutes when the dependencies are up to date. So beware hardware and operating systems that are not current.