Howtoforge posted a tutorial about running PrestaShop 1.5.x with Nginx on Debian 7/Ubuntu 12.10

This tutorial shows how you can install and run a PrestaShop 1.5.x web site on a Debian Wheezy or Ubuntu 12.10 system that has nginx installed instead of Apache (LEMP = Linux + nginx (pronounced "engine x") + MySQL + PHP). nginx is a HTTP server that uses much less resources than Apache and delivers pages a lot of faster, especially static files.

  Running PrestaShop 1.5.x On Nginx (LEMP) On Debian Wheezy/Ubuntu 12.10