The question is admittedly poorly phrased, in fact it is a statement not a question. However, the meaning is clear. Why does wireless work with Ubuntu and not Debian?
juliajuliad, this is one of the differences between Ubuntu and Debian. Ubuntu is designed to be easy to use out of the box and "just work" to the extent possible. Debian, which is a more traditional Linux than Ubuntu will leave more for you to configure. Normally, these days even wireless is detected automatically, but sometimes it can still be a problem. In order to use wireless, you will need two things: a driver, or module as they are referred to in Linux, and a network manager, such as wicd.
Here might be a good place to start:
http://wiki.debian.org/WiFi/HowToUse as it discusses these concepts and provides some how to information on installing. Of course this assumes you have a proper driver installed. The good news is that there apparently is a working driver for your system. Here is a link that should direct you to the drivers based upon the specs of your machine:
http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/
Before attempting to install a driver, you should verify whether or not one is installed. You can get a list of the modules loaded using the lsmod command. You will probably need to perform this function as root. I would suggest that you 'grep' for terms associated with the driver or wireless card to narrow the list. Unfortunately, I am not sure exactly what term to use, so you will need to experiment. Note, you can always load the Ubuntu liveCD and see what driver it is using as you know this works with your card.