Can you get it to work without help of KDE? (i.e. with ifconfig/iwconfig)
Code:
lspci | grep -i wireless
Use the output of that command to determine if your card is supported by ath5k using their compatibility website. Mine is an AR242x and neither madwifi or ath5k handle it. I need to get a snapshot of madwifi as the "production" version does not support my card.
If you need to switch to madwifi, you can blacklist the ath5k module by adding the following to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist:
I compile my own kernel and just leave it out so you could do that if you're going down that route (blacklisting is just fine if not). Then you can go to
www.SlackBuilds.org, search for madwifi (currently there isn't anything labeled 12.2 but you can modify the 12.1 scripts to match up), and get the tools and the driver. If there's a new version of madwifi, you need to use a snapshot as I do, or have any questions about using the Slackbuild process we can help you get up and running.
As far as using KDE to manage your wireless, I would recommend installing the wicd package from extra and following the directions on getting that working instead of using KDE.