How to install Drupal 7 on Ubuntu? I'm in the process to move the development on Ubuntu 14.04.

At the beginning everything seemed to work fine but quickly I discovered it was not.

Installing new modules, by UI, Drupal stops without (displaying) any error and shows a blank page. After that, the site works undisturbed. You can go back and continue on other tasks.

After many attempts to log the error without success, I run few test with NetBeans discovering that the code stops, with no reason, in system.tar.inc, when preparing to untar the package. Really weird.   

Tried with fresh install of Drupal 7.28: the same.

Now I don't know how to go on. Main suspect is PHP 5.5.9, but before starting a new adventure with PHP versions, I'd like to hear you. What should I try first?



No way.
Reinstalled starting from a new VirtualBox, Ubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 7.28.
Same story, all is working but stops when I try to install a new module (without errors).

I took note of every piece i installed and can't find a reason why.  

apache

    apt-get install apache2



in global section of /etc/apache2/apache2.confd:

ServerName localhost

replace run user in /etc/apache2/envvars

export APACHE_RUN_USER=joe   
export APACHE_RUN_GROUP=joe  

rewrite mode

sudo a2enmod rewrite



MYSQL

    apt-get install mysql-server  
    apt-get install mysql-client
    apt-get install mysql-workbench     
    mysql_secure_installation  


PHP5

    apt-get install php5  
    apt-cache search php  
    apt-get install php5-curl php-pear php5-imagick php5-imap  
    apt-get install php5-mcrypt libssh2-php php5-dev php5-gd php5-mcrypt 



changed values in php.ini

realpath_cache_ttl = 36000  
max_execution_time = 300  
max_input_time = 60
memory_limit = 256M  
post_max_size = 128M  
upload_max_filesize = 256M  
default_socket_timeout = 60  

apt-get install phpmyadmin

complete manually some missing conf in: /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

include /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf

virtual host test-me

&lt;VirtualHost *:80&gt;  
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost  
ServerName test.me  
ServerAlias *.test.me  
DocumentRoot /home/joe/Workarea/test-me  
&lt;Directory "/home/joe/Workarea/test-me"&gt;  
Options All  
AllowOverride All  
Require all granted  
 &lt;/Directory&gt;  
&lt;/VirtualHost&gt;  

in /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1   test.me



DRUPAL


created a db test-me with collation utf8_unicode_ci
in: /home/joe/Workarea

wget http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-7.28.tar.gz 
tar xzvf drupal-7.28 
mv drupal-7.28 test-me 

in settings.php file:

$databases['default']['default'] = array(  
  'driver' =&gt; 'mysql', 
  'database' =&gt; 'test-me', 
  'username' =&gt; 'root', 
  'password' =&gt; '', 
  'host' =&gt; 'localhost', 
  'prefix' =&gt; 'main_', 
  'collation' =&gt; 'utf8_unicode_ci', 
);  

Permissions:

chmod 644 settings.php  
chmod  a+w sites/default
This could be a bug, see:


https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/php5/+bug/1315888
https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=53829


As I had the same error and after deep diving I reached to modules/system/system.tar.inc at line 716 which calls gzopen(). Here the errors are suppressed using @.

Actually its giving following error on ubuntu 14.04:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function gzopen() in /var/www/html/drupcom/modules/system/system.tar.inc on line 718


So this is issue with Zlib. 
I've tried to solve it using 
these instructions, but no luck. Then I found that it is known bug.