Slax live - possible to get wireless; fan control?

Hi, I have one of the old <10" aa1:s with a 4G ssd (it says "model no. zg5" on the back). Now the ssd seems to have given up for good, and my googling tells me it's neither easy or cheap to replace it. So I've been looking for a way to run the OS off an usb key instead. Xubuntu, which I'm used to, works fairly well. However, I've come across Slax in the process and my impression is that it runs quite a bit faster.

There are some problems with it though:
a) no fan control (acerhdf).
b) inferior wireless network range (compared to when running xubuntu)

I seem to recall that there were similar problems in getting xubuntu to run back in the day. The acerhdf has been 'incorporated into the kernel' nowadays (i put the phrase in quotes since I have only a vague understanding of what it means and may have gotten it wrong), and wireless works out of the box nowadays, but in the beginning I had similar range problems with the various methods of getting wireless connection.

So, my question to anyone who can guess the nature of the problem from the information above:

Would it be reasonable to try to get Slax to work like for instance *buntu in these two areas (and, please, what would be the steps?). Or should I abandon the idea and perhaps look for another *fast* live linux distro (suggestions much appreciated )?