All I can suggest is what worked for me here

It looks like you tried to download the file manually and unzip. Instead just clone the app from github.

The thing is that some time ago it simply just worked doing laravel new <app_name> and you would and with a full install of Laravel 4.* base application without the need to do a composer install afterwards. Now it just spits out these error messages when doing laravel new <app_name> in my terminal and there doesn't seem to be anything that has changed. It just started to not work.

Do not bother renaming the file, and do not bother with /usr/local/bin. Just place laravel.phar in the folder where you are going to use it.

Then, make sure you have the PHP curl module installed. On OpenSuse: sudo zypper install php5-curl.

Then create your new Laravel application with the following command (notice you use the php command to execute the .phar file): php laravel.phar new <project-name>, e.g. php laravel.phar new sandbox. A new subfolder will be created with the project-name as its name, containing the skeleton of a Laravel application.