what version of linux supports the intel wireless card ipw2100?

Every Linux kernel for several years includes the driver. But not every distro will include the proprietary firmware. For example Fedora and Debian will ship without the firmware because of their free software policies but Ubuntu and Vector will ship with the firmware included and installed out of the box. In a distro like Debian it's possible to enable the non-free repository and have the package manager install the non-free firmware. In some distros you may need to download it yourself from Intel and as root extract it into /lib/firmware (typically, though a few distros might use /lib/hotplug).

Anyway the driver is excellent and obtaining the firmware is easy so use whichever distro you like, it'll work fine.

i looked into ubuntu but it seemed a lot of people were having problems with it.i think i might just check out vector linux and see how that goes.thanks