I'm on Ubuntu 14.04 and I've been trying all possible methods to install Laravel to no avail. Error messages everything I try. I'm now trying the first method in the quickstart documentation, that is, via Laravel Installer, but it says to "Make sure to place the ~/.composer/vendor/bin directory in your PATH so the Laravel executable is found when you run the Laravel command in your terminal." so my question is, how do I do that? This may be a simple question but I'm really frustrated and would appreciate any help.

To put this folder on the PATH environment variable type

export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/.composer/vendor/bin"

This appends the folder to your existing PATH, however, it is only active for your current terminal session.

If you want it to be automatically set, it depends on the shell you are using. For bash, you can append this line to $HOME/.bashrc using your favorite editor or type the following on the shell

echo 'export PATH="$PATH:$HOME/.composer/vendor/bin"' >> ~/.bashrc

In order to check if it worked, logout and login again or execute

source ~/.bashrc

on the shell.

PS: For other systems where there is no ~/.bashrc, you can also put this into ~/.bash_profile

PSS: For more recent laravel you need to put $HOME/.config/composer/vendor/bin on the PATH.

PSSS: If you want to put this folder on the path also for other shells or on the GUI, you should append the said export command to ~/.profile (cf. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EnvironmentVariables).