First, to get this thing going, we'll need to resolve some dependencies. To do that, run this command from the terminal: $ sudo apt-get install php-pear php5-dev Next, you should easily be able to install the driver with the following command: $ sudo pecl install mongo What makes Ubuntu a little different from other systems in how PHP extensions get loading when Apache/PHP starts. To make sure this extension gets loaded, we'll need to add a .ini file to "/etc/php5/conf.d". To do that, run the following command: $ sudo touch /etc/php5/conf.d/mongo.ini After creating the file, add this line of content: extension=mongo.so After you've saved your new .ini file, restart Apache and verify that the extension is loading with phpinfo() .