I tried using Netgear WAG511 (atheros) under Ubuntu. When introduced, the card causes the Atheros driver to appear in the Restricted Driver Manager, but running iwconfig shows no wireless. Network manager does not have an option for it either. So it seems like I need to install madwifi, unless there is something else I need to do first. I'm concerned that installing madwifi will not necessarily make the card appear.

Secondly, I have a USB Soyo wireless 801.11b adapter called as-awua1211. It seems to use a prism chip. Is there any hope to configure it under linux? If yes, how?

Finally, is there a performance penalty in using ndiswrapper vs native drivers? In my case with Soyo, is there a way to install the USB adapter with native drivers?

tia

I'll reply to my own post, since nobody else has.
I installed OpenSUSE 10.2, and sure enough, it recognized and configured the USB Prism2 based card as "Intersil" something, but could not see the Atheros based WAG511. I was able to get WAG511 working by installing madwifi.
The joy was shortlived, however, because opensuse no longer boots due to nvidia driver issues (not even failsafe!)