Solved

Though this fix was tested on an MSI X320 running Ubuntu 14.04, it should work fine on most other Poulsbo based devices. Please let me know your device make, model, if it did / did not work for you.

Just run this command in Terminal:

sudo echo "options snd-hda-intel position_fix=1" >> /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

Then restart for the settings to apply.

Setting up, upgrading and maintaining a clean and functional Drupal/PHP Development environment is an art, and quite a piece of cake for the skilled sysadmin. But the ever changing versions of OS packages and dependencies can bring up quite some unexpected challenges to a budding developer. Here is the solution to one such error that might eat your brains out.

Almost all usable versions of Drupal - 6, 7 and 8 - use PECL uploadprogress to show file upload progress.
And installing it on previous Ubuntu, PHP versions was as easy as running the following command:

These are some common errors that you might face when you try to build/compile/install something from source on Ubuntu Linux Server/Desktop:

fatal error: openssl/ssl.h: No such file or directory
fatal error: zlib.h: No such file or directory
fatal error: png.h: No such file or directory
fatal error: curl/curl.h: No such file or directory
fatal error: expat.h: No such file or directory

This would be because of some missing library packages which contain these include files.

The ideal way to deal with these would be:

Drupal 7 provides a feature that allows you to install a new module via the Drupal interface itself, without entering your hosting server's cPanel/alternative File Manager to upload files.

That works like a charm for most hosting servers and makes installing modules/themes a breeze on Drupal.

For some others, trying to install modules that way (from admin/modules/install) might just bring up something that looks like the following:
Exception: Invalid checksum for file ... calculated, 0 expected in Archive_Tar->_error() (line 635 of .../my-site.com/modules/system/system.tar.inc).

Here's how to fix this: