It is crazy to suggest that php 5.6 requirements will go away over night from our customers. 14.04 goes does at the end of the month.. There is no point bouncing people to 16.04 for a few years so 18.04 is the way forward.
for anyone fed up with this you can add php 5.6 fpm support to ubuntu 18.04 with
Code:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
apt-get install php5.6
apt-get install php5.6-igbinary php5.6-mbstring php5.6-mcrypt php5.6-soap php5.6-redis php5.6-intl php5.6-mcrypt php5.6-mysqli php5.6-xml
apt-get install php5.6-fpm
apt-get install php5.6-cgi
sudo update-alternatives --config php
/usr/local/psa/bin/php_handler --add -displayname fpm-56 -path /usr/bin/php-cgi5.6 -phpini /etc/php/5.6/fpm/php.ini -type fpm -clipath /usr/bin/php5.6 -poold /etc/php/5.6/fpm/pool.d -service php5.6-fpm