After much searching and hunting and not finding, I have discovered the perfect Linux distro for my Averatec 3250H1 laptop, Ubuntu's Breezy Badger. Everything just works. Closing the lid locks the screen, hibernating works and resumes with ACPI turned on with the fan working properly, and the right drivers installed for the rt2500 wireless card. Yes, folks, this is the one. And I'm willing to go GNOME for something that just works.

One thing. If you're going to use WPA for the wireless, you do need to install the RaConfig2500 tool.

1. Install kdebase using Synaptic (In the System Menu at the top)
2. Download my precompiled RaConfig2500? (If this doesn't work, let me know) or compile your own.
3. Have fun!

Once you connect, you may need to sudo dhclient ra0, but that's not that big of a deal. After you run it the first time, it happens automatically on start up.

I've been waiting months for this. I'm now an official Ubuntu fan, sorry Mepis.