[vox-tech] frustrating laptop problem

[Norm Matloff]

So, I recently "inherited" an Acer Aspire One, model 722.  (My daughter
had been using it but she then bought a Mac.)  Naturally, I wanted to
install Linux on it.

I began with my distro of choice, Ubuntu (in this case 12.04).
Installed fine; didn't even need to fiddle with the WiFi.  But after
installation, it turned out that the touchpad would freeze after a few
seconds.  Same when I attached a USB external mouse.  

Subsequently, I tried various Debian derivatives, such as MEPIS and
Mint.  Each had some kind of problem.  For instance, one of them froze
when I tried to click to select my desired SSID.  Mint actually froze
during the installation process itself (and did so each of the several
times I retried it).

Last, I turned to Fedora.  The installation went absolutely fine (again,
including the WiFi), with no special actions on my part.  And yet...it
won't shut down!  Whether I click to shutdown, or run poweroff from a
terminal window, it just hangs; KDE shuts down, the screen goes black, a
cryptic message appears regarding a fonts file, but that's all.

The one piece of good news is that I'm not imagining any of this. :-)
All of the above problems are discussed on various Web sites.  Yet none
of the suggested remedies worked.

If anyone has any suggestions, they would be highly appreciated.

Norm