Puzzled - how Netrunner makes it right and Kubuntu does not?

[Juan R. de Silva]

I cannot restart or shutdown Kubuntu neither via GUI, nor from CLI within 
a session, nor from GUI or TTY after logout. "Will now halt..." is 
displayed and stays there forever forcing the use of Power Off button.

Logout works fine.

The problem is widely discussed on forums without a real solution to it. 
However, in my case it shows up in a very peculiar way.

I have multiboot laptop with Kubuntu 14.04, Netrunner 14 (Kubuntu 14.04 
based), Ubuntu 14.04 and Xubuntu 14.04.

All systems are based on the same version of Ubuntu, run on the same 
hardware and use the same set of drivers. And neither of systems except 
Kubuntu exhibits the problem.

The fact that Netrunner, which is based in Kubuntu itself, works just 
fine amazes me the most. The systems are practically identical.

Any ideas folks?

BTW. I installed Netrunner because of this problem. And I'm glad I did. 
Very, very nice distro indeed.