AAO D150-1920: left mouse button stops working

I am having a really weird problem with my Acer Aspire One D150-1920, ever since it came back from the repair shop. It went a few weeks ago for sudden death - as in, wouldn't power on, wouldn't do anything - and came back able to power up, but with this odd hardware problem.

As the title suggests, the left mouse button stops working after a random amount of time. I don't mean just one mouse, I mean every one of 3 mice I've tried so far, each one of which works just fine with any other computer, including other Acer Aspire One netbooks. Two are Logitech wireless mice, and one is an Acer wireless mouse that came with an Acer netbook accessory kit. The left touchpad button ceases to work at the same time, as does the double-tap gesture, which generally does the same thing as a left-click.

The problem only happens when running some kind of Linux. It happens in all of the following distros:

Linux Mint 8 (Helena)
Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10
Xubuntu 9.10
Kuki Linux 2.8

The problem has occurred in Live sessions of all of these, running off a USB memory stick, as well as had drive installs of a couple. Not being able to left-click stopped me from completing the install process for Mint and Xubuntu. When I did manage to get Ubuntu Netbook Remix and Kuki Linux installed, I found that the problem persisted. So it doesn't seem to have anything to do with booting off a USB stick.

This lack-of-left-click problem starts anytime from the first few minutes after booting, to most of an hour later. It's very annoying, as it means I can't use any sort of GUI. I can only drop to the command line and do stuff that doesn't use the mouse.

The problem does NOT happen ever, at all, under Windows XP Home. I've used it for hours on end and been able to left click to my heart's content, from login to shutdown. It also hasn't happened in Windows 7 RC, although I don't use Win 7 very much so that's not definitive.

What the heck is going on? Do I still have some broken hardware? That was my first thought, but I don't see how broken hardware could only be broken when I try to run Linux.

update:
Tried Puppy Linux on a USB stick also. Didn't have the problem, though I left it running for a couple of hours. So it seems that only when running a Debian- or Ubuntu-based distro is when the left mouse buttons stops working. Bizarre.

 

Well geez, now the left touchpad button doesn't work at all. I can still use an external mouse, provided I'm running Windows or Puppy Linux, but part of the touchpad not working is a showstopper. I guess this one's going in for warranty repair/replacement.