This is Composer being slow. You need to wait for it and, yeah, it may be a lot of time.
You also can try to download the packages one by one, installing Laravel "manually"
Create your directory and enter it:
mkdir /var/www/laravel/ex2/laravel
cd /var/www/laravel/ex2/laravel
Dowload all packages ony by one:
composer require filp/whoops 1.0.7
composer require nikic/php-parser dev-master#700847e
composer require jeremeamia/superclosure 1.0.1
composer require doctrine/lexer dev-master#bc0e1f0
composer require doctrine/annotations v1.1.2
composer require doctrine/collections dev-master#bcb5377
composer require doctrine/cache v1.3.0
composer require doctrine/inflector dev-master#8b4b3cc
composer require doctrine/common dev-master#d9dea98
composer require doctrine/dbal 2.4.x-dev#9efdbce
composer require psr/log 1.0.0
composer require monolog/monolog dev-master#a501075
composer require symfony/translation 2.3.x-dev#6aedcff
composer require symfony/routing 2.3.x-dev#7d41463
composer require symfony/process 2.3.x-dev#8289810
composer require symfony/debug 2.3.x-dev#085d4fd
composer require symfony/http-foundation 2.3.x-dev#796619f
composer require symfony/event-dispatcher 2.3.x-dev#2d8ece3
composer require symfony/http-kernel 2.3.x-dev#9795c9f
composer require symfony/finder 2.3.x-dev#a175521
composer require symfony/dom-crawler 2.3.x-dev#4dc2c59
composer require symfony/css-selector 2.3.x-dev#8df20c5
composer require symfony/console 2.3.x-dev#f880062
composer require symfony/browser-kit 2.3.x-dev#7fc66ea
composer require symfony/filesystem dev-master#e558fd5
composer require swiftmailer/swiftmailer v5.0.2
composer require predis/predis 0.8.x-dev#ff004ae
composer require patchwork/utf8 v1.1.14
composer require nesbot/carbon 1.4.0
composer require ircmaxell/password-compat 1.0.x-dev#1fc1521
composer require classpreloader/classpreloader 1.0.1
Finally download Laravel
composer require laravel/framework 4.0.x-dev
composer require laravel/laravel 4.0.x
Move it to the right place
mv -f vendor/laravel/laravel/* .
mv -f vendor/laravel/laravel/.g* .
rm -rf vendor/laravel/laravel
And execute this to fix your composer.lock
composer update
After downloading the packages, Composer will cache them in your home folder, so next install you don't have to download all of them manually, unless, of course, some are updated.
Note: this is will work only for Laravel 4.0.9, since some of those packages are "marked" to download an specific commit (example: #700847e).