[vox-tech] frustrating laptop problem

[Peter Salzman]

On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 3:56 PM, Norm Matloff <matloff at cs.ucdavis.edu>wrote:

>
> 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
>

I remember back in the day there was a debate over whether Linux should be
able to shut off computers.  I remember being outraged because it seemed
like such a stupid argument.  The argument went along the lines of (I
think.. this is over 15 years ago) that the ability to shut down power
required BIOS support and therefore, should not be a part of the kernel
proper but perhaps a supporting module / package combo.

Anyway, that obviously got resolved a long, long time ago, but the take
away is that the ability to shut power down (not just shut off the OS) is
BIOS related.   Are there BIOS updates for the laptop?

Pete
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