Laragon for Linux

Laragon does not run on Linux. It is a Windows-only application, and its maintainers have repeatedly said a Linux port is not planned. There is no official .deb, no .rpm, no AppImage, and running the Windows build under Wine is not viable because Laragon ships Windows binaries of Apache, Nginx, PHP and MySQL along with its own tray application.

If you have moved to Linux, or you work on Linux and someone told you to "just use Laragon", Lerd is the closest equivalent. It is the same idea, a single tool that gives every project a pretty .test URL, HTTPS, a PHP version and the databases it needs, with nothing to configure per project. It is MIT licensed, free for commercial use, and runs on Linux and macOS.

curl -fsSL https://lerd.sh/install.sh | bash
cd ~/code/myapp
lerd link

Your project is live at https://myapp.test. That is the whole setup.

Prefer your package manager? Lerd is also available through an apt PPA, a Fedora COPR or Homebrew, so it updates with the rest of your system.

Every Laragon feature, and the Lerd equivalent

What you used in Laragon	The same thing in Lerd
Pretty URLs, app.test with no hosts file edits	Automatic .test domains, resolved by a dnsmasq container wired into your system resolver, no /etc/hosts edits
Auto virtual hosts, a vhost file generated per project	An nginx vhost generated on lerd link, with overrides when you need them
One-click SSL, self-signed certificates	lerd secure, a real mkcert certificate trusted by your system and browsers, no warning page
Quick app, create Laravel, WordPress or Symfony in one click	lerd new myapp, scaffolds through the framework's own installer, then links and serves it
Multiple PHP versions, switched from the tray	PHP 7.4 and 8.0 to 8.5, picked per project by lerd isolate 8.4 or auto-detected from composer.json
Bundled MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis, Memcached	lerd service start mysql, plus PostgreSQL, Redis, Meilisearch, MongoDB, S3-compatible storage and Mailpit, shared across every site
The tray menu, start/stop, logs, terminal	A system tray, a web dashboard at 127.0.0.1:7073 and a terminal dashboard
Cmder terminal with the right PHP on PATH	lerd php, lerd composer and lerd shell, always on the version that project is registered on
Portable, everything in C:\laragon	Everything under ~/.config/lerd and ~/.local/share/lerd, XDG-compliant, nothing written to system directories
Node, npm, Python and Go bundled alongside PHP	Per-project Node, plus any other runtime through a Containerfile.lerd

Lerd vs Laragon

	Lerd	Laragon
Platforms	Linux (systemd), macOS, Windows via WSL2 (beta)	Windows only
License	Open source (MIT), free for commercial use	Proprietary, a licence is required from Laragon 7 onwards
Cost	Free	Free unlicenced tier with a reminder popup and no auto-updates; paid non-commercial and commercial licences
Stack	Nginx, PHP-FPM and services as rootless Podman containers	Apache or Nginx and services as native Windows binaries in a portable folder
.test domains	Automatic, through a dnsmasq container	Automatic, through hosts file entries written by the tray app
HTTPS	lerd secure, mkcert certificate trusted system-wide	One-click self-signed certificate, trusted after you install it manually
PHP versions	7.4, 8.0 to 8.5, per project	Multiple versions, downloaded into the Laragon folder
Per-project config	.lerd.yaml committed to the repo, covering PHP, Node, services and workers	None, configuration lives in the Laragon install
Queue and scheduler workers	lerd worker start queue / schedule, as systemd user services	Not built in
Dashboard	Web UI, system tray, terminal dashboard, installable PWA	Native tray application
AI / MCP	Built-in MCP server for Claude Code, Cursor, Junie and Windsurf	Not built in
Non-PHP projects	First-class through Containerfile.lerd (Node, Python, Go, Rails)	Node, Python and Go binaries bundled, not served as projects

Choose Laragon when: you are on Windows, you want native binaries with no container layer, and the portable folder model suits how you work.

Choose Lerd when: you are on Linux or macOS, you want the same zero-config workflow without a Docker daemon or a per-project compose file, or you want the environment itself described in a file you can commit.

Moving from Laragon to Lerd

Nothing inside your projects has to change. Lerd reads them where they are.

1. Copy the projects across. Everything in C:\laragon\www can go anywhere on Linux, for example ~/code. There is no document root to respect.

2. Export your databases. From Laragon, dump each database before you leave Windows:

mysqldump -u root myapp > myapp.sql

3. Install Lerd and start it.

curl -fsSL https://lerd.sh/install.sh | bash
lerd start

4. Link each project. Run this inside the project directory:

cd ~/code/myapp
lerd link

Lerd detects the framework, picks the PHP version from composer.json, writes the nginx vhost, registers myapp.test and provisions the certificate. Use lerd init instead if you want to choose the PHP version, HTTPS and services through a wizard and save the answers to .lerd.yaml.

5. Restore the database.

lerd service start mysql
lerd db:import myapp.sql

6. Point the app at the shared services. lerd env rewrites the .env database, cache and mail entries to match the services lerd is running, so DB_HOST, REDIS_HOST and MAIL_HOST line up without you editing them by hand.

Full detail lives in the quick start and the site management guide.

What is genuinely different

Be aware of these before you switch, they are the places where the mental model changes:

• Containers, not a portable folder. PHP and the services run in rootless Podman containers, so there is no C:\laragon you can copy to another machine. What you commit instead is .lerd.yaml, which rebuilds the same environment anywhere.
• Services are shared, not per project. One MySQL, one Redis, one Mailpit across every site, which is why five running projects cost around 200 MB of RAM rather than five full stacks.
• Nginx by default. Lerd serves through Nginx and PHP-FPM. If a project depends on .htaccess rules, translate them into an nginx override.
• One sudo at install time. Only to point the system resolver at the .test domains. Everything after that runs as your own user.

Staying on Windows

If you are not leaving Windows, Lerd runs inside WSL2, currently in beta. Your projects live on the Linux filesystem and are reachable from Windows browsers at their .test addresses. See the Windows (WSL2) guide.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a Laragon version for Linux? No, and there are no plans for one. Laragon is a Windows application built around Windows binaries and a Windows tray app.

Can I run Laragon on Ubuntu with Wine? Not practically. The bundled Apache, Nginx, PHP and MySQL are Windows builds, and the parts of Laragon that make it worth using, the tray app, the hosts file automation and the vhost generation, are the parts least likely to work.

What is the best Laragon alternative for Linux? Lerd, if you want the Laragon model of a shared zero-config stack that any project can be dropped into. DDEV or Lando if you would rather have a per-project Docker stack described in a committed config file.

Does Lerd need Docker? No. It uses rootless Podman, which has no daemon, and it never asks for Docker Desktop.

Is Lerd free for commercial work? Yes. MIT licensed, with no paid tier and no licence popup.

Next steps

• Requirements and installation
• Quick start, a project served in two commands
• Full comparison against Laravel Herd, Sail, DDEV and Lando