Laravel Vs Codeigniter. A difficult choice

I had a look at laravel some time ago; there was a dictomy in that its touted as really well written, except the writers didn't see to be bothered to make it KISS in setting up. On Linux , I read I had to install homestead , then vitualbox nearly a GIG of other stuff.

I googled to see how I could write my own php class and seamlessly integrate it; i couldn't find a single entry.

Here's one thought, it's easy to write your own class and use them with CodeIgniter; for the time in hours you take to even know LAravel inside out ; which i guess you need to , could be spent on writing your own Class to do what's ever is needed or leverage available libraries thats are available through . https://packagist.org/ and install via composer

Just thank yourself lucky the client didn't insist on Wordpress !

I use Arch Linux by the way 

CMS in Action