I always find it confusing to install PHP for CGI with MySQL support on Debian. I tried with apt first, then with the unofficial packages from dotdeb, before finally giving in to compile-from-source of PHP 5.

But then when I do that, I always have trouble figuring out which switches to use. So with some help from this snippet, I figured out to do this, and it worked well enough to let me install mint:

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/php5-fcgi --enable-fastcgi \
  --enable-force-cgi-redirect --disable-cli --with-mysql