I would do it this way, but I dont have the internet on my linux OS, thats why I am trying to
get my wireless card to work

Well, I don't have Ubuntu, but I do have Debian Etch.

When I first installed Debian, the first DVD (as it was the only one I used for the install) was automatically added to the apt sources.list in /etc/apt/sources.list. So when I open Synaptic from the main menu/system/synaptic, whatever packages that are on that first DVD are recorded, I believe this is also where I added the other two DVD's to the sources.list, not sure as I'm in Fedora now. But if your disc's are listed in your apt sources.list, when you check for available packages in Synaptic there should be a list of packages, this is from what is on the disc's. So via command line if you issue an apt-get command without internet connection, apt will tell you to put the appropriate disc in the drive to install it. You do not need internet to use apt-get or Synaptic. You can also put a check mark next to a package in synaptic's list of available packages and hit "apply" to install it, synaptic will/may come back saying other packages need to be installed also, agree and continue.
Check in apt's GUI called Synaptic to see if there are available packages, check for what Matir suggests "ipw3945 driver" and if it is there, put a check next to it and hit apply, you may also have to go through some system configuration setup to set up the card. I'll power down Fedora and skip on over to Etch to verify/correct my preaching.

OK

I'll help you get to know your new Linux. I will give instructions using the KDE desktop manager, if you only have Gnome, things should generally be in a similar area.
First, go to main menu/system/more_applications and right click on "File Manager - super user mode" and select "Add item to main panel". This will help you get to know the file structure/tree and you can edit files through here also instead of using an editor. Click on the new icon that showed up by the clock and put in your root password, hit enter. A new window shows up, you are now in /root directory which is the root/administrator's home directory, at the top click on the arrow that points up to take you to / which is the root directory for the entire system. Now click on "etc/apt/sources.list" (double click on etc, then double click on apt, then double click on the sources.list file). In here you should have a line for every disc you have similar to this (You'll have Ubuntu):

deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux testing _Etch_ - Official Snapshot amd64 DVD Binary-1 20070216-00:44]/ etch contrib main

If there is a hash mark (#) at the beginning of these lines, remove it and click File/save at the top of the window. If there are no entries similar to the one I posted above, you will need to add your discs as the drivers you need may very well be on the discs. You can close this list now and go to main menu/system/synaptic_package_manager, to add your CD/DVD's to the list, put the one you need to add in the drive and click on "Edit/Add_CD-ROM" at the top of the window and follow instructions, do this for all your discs to add all your available packages to Synaptic. You may have to close and re-open Synaptic after adding all discs to get the packages to show up.

EDIT: First, through Synaptic, install "linux-headers-2.6xxxx" replace xxxx with what is appropriate to match your kernel, to find which kernel you have, type in a terminal:

uname -r

In my list (I have sources off the internet also), is a package called "ipw3945d and quite a few ipw3945-modules-2.6.xxxx), the xxxx represents different types of kernels that could be installed on my system. These are probably the packages Matir mentioned. If they are present, put a check next to the appropriate ones and click "Apply" at the top, you may be told other packages need to be installed when checking them, click OK. It will tell you which disc to put in the drive and click OK.
If you do not have these packages available, you will need to find them from Ubuntu's site and download them and put them either on a USB flash drive or into a shared partition between Windows and Linux and navigate to that directory via command line to install them.

If you put the packages on a flash drive, plug it in and wait for KDE to show a pop up asking what to do, click OK to have the flash drive mounted and then close the window (file browser) that appears, or leave it open, not a big deal. Open a terminal and change directory to it with command similar to this, NOTE: use the Super User file manager created earlier to see where it is, it should be in /media:

cd /media/xxxxx

The xxxx are the name of your flash drive (case sensitive), click enter. Now to install the ipw3945d package use this command (using your actual packages name):

sudo dpkg -i ipw3945d

Hit enter and enter your root password and hopefully it will install, it may tell you it can't because of failed dependencies, you have to install those dependencies it lists first, check to see if they are available in Synaptic, if not, download them also and install with similar command as above.

Apt-get and aptitude install from the sources.list, aptitiude is better, dpkg installs individual packages in the directory you are in or the directory you define in the command. Here is a link to apt-get How to:

http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/ap...g-scanpackages

Hope this helps.

thank you very much!, I'll give it a try and report back,
the only thing I'm worried about is that my Ubuntu only came on
one disc...

when i tried to install the ipw package i got this error:
muzzleloader@muzzleloader:~/IntelWireless/ipw3945-linux-1.2.0/ipw3945-1.2.0$ make
/bin/sh: Syntax error: "(" unexpected
/bin/sh: Syntax error: "(" unexpected
-e
WARNING: Your kernel contains ieee80211 symbol definitions and you
are not using the kernel's default ieee80211 subsystem. (Perhaps you
used the out-of-tree ieee80211 subsystem's 'make install' or have
provided a path to the ieee80211 subsystem via IEEE80211_INC.)

If you wish to use the out-of-tree ieee80211 subsystem then it is
recommended to use that projects' "make patch_kernel" facility
and rebuild your kernel to update the Module symbol version information.

Failure to do this may result in build warnings and unexpected
behavior when running modules which rely on the ieee80211 subsystem.


-e Aborting the build. You can force the build to continue by adding:

IEEE80211_IGNORE_DUPLICATE=y

to your make command line.


make: *** [check_inc] Error 1

thanks

OK
I have no experience with building ethernet modules, it does say you can try anyways, but I don't recommend it. Hopefully Matir can help. I have read in other threads where people had to also install a package for the "ieee80211 subsystem", and there are quite a few versions of this package, some appear to have problems, so you're probably going to have to do some research through Google to figure that part out and find the right one. This is all my limited knowledge can offer on that front, I'm probably going to be in the same boots pretty soon as I just finished downloading Mandriva for my Dell XPS Gen 2 laptop which also has bluetooth.
If your Ubuntu only came with one disc, great, I find it was a waste of time downloading all three of Debian Etch DVD's as I've yet to install anything off of disc 2 & 3, and because Etch is in testing, most anything that gets installed off the discs will require one to download an updated package soon after anyway.

I wounder what would happen if you issued the command Matir mentioned?:

sudo apt-get install linux-restricted-modules

I tried that as soon as Matir suggested it, but it needed to get the package from the
internet