Re: 1st pc, no GUI install, x & wifi problems (I named this one 'play2')
ISO passes md5sum check. Don't use a separate home partition. All personal files are kept in a separate data partition mounted as /common, with symbolic links from login directory to directories on /common. Don't think /common was mounted during install, added to fstab 2 days later.
I currently have 7 distros installed on play2. Good news is that after SEVERAL DAYS of playing with it (TUI boot, root login, start xfce4, start wifi, then logout, relogin as me and start xfce4 and wifi) installation seems
to be normal. Today, booting GUI, login as me, wifi autostarts, menus work, etc. Have done more desktop configuration, installed thunderbird, gnucash, libreoffice, did some browsing. Only change was insuring that xfce4 was preselected session before logging in. Did this several days ago, didn't seem to make any difference then. Today it's GREAT and FAST

. System seems to have healed itself. X can still die on login but works OK if I try again.