Laravel 5 PDOException Could Not Find Driver

I'm using Ubuntu 16.04 and PHP 5.6.20

After too many problems, the below steps solved this for me:

1. find php.ini path via phpinfo()

2. uncomment

   extension=php_pdo_mysql.dll
   

3. add this line

   extension=pdo_mysql.so
   

4. then run

   sudo apt-get install php-mysql
   

You should install PDO on your server. Edit your php.ini (look at your phpinfo(), "Loaded Configuration File" line, to find the php.ini file path). Find and uncomment the following line (remove the ; character):

;extension=pdo_mysql.so

Then, restart your Apache server. For more information, please read the documentation.

Same thing happend to me after upgrading distro.

Running sudo apt-get install php7.0-mysql fixed it for me.