Ok, I feel like I have made some progress now, I have been following a method for getting wirless installed on my Dell with wireless card: PRO/Wireless 3945ABG.

Here is what I have done so far:
-Installed 'ndiswrapper' and 'wireless tools' using YaST
-Copied the driver( both .inf and .sys files) from windows to a /tmp directory
-Installed the driver using command "ndiswrapper -i <drivername>.inf"
-On typing "ndiswrapper -l" it tells me that the divice is there and that the driver is installed
-Then i typed in some random command (because i was told to): "modprobe ndiswrapper"
***BUT***
-when I run iwconfig or ifconfig -a, the wlan() doesn't show up. the only results are:

***:/home/*** # iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

sit0 no wireless extensions.

This is driving me up the wall. Any pointers or suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated.

Why not use the linux drivers for the ipw3945?
http://ipw3945.sourceforge.net/

Works great here.

Try typing "ifconfig wlan0 up" and THEN "iwconfig." See if that works. Since you've gotten this far with NdisWrapper, I'd finish up with that first. If it doesn't work for whatever reason, like Zmyrgel said, that card does have native Linux drivers.

Ok, so I thought i would try the ipw3945 thing. Before installing that, it told me I needed ieee<something>, so i got that and tried to do it, here is what i got when installing the ieee thing:

ollie:/home/nathan/Desktop # cd ieee80211-1.2.15/
ollie:/home/nathan/Desktop/ieee80211-1.2.15 # make
Checking in /lib/modules/2.6.16.13-4-smp for ieee80211 components...
/lib/modules/2.6.16.13-4-smp/kernel/net/ieee80211/ieee80211_crypt_tkip.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.16.13-4-smp/kernel/net/ieee80211/ieee80211_crypt.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.16.13-4-smp/kernel/net/ieee80211/ieee80211.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.16.13-4-smp/kernel/net/ieee80211/ieee80211_crypt_ccmp.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.16.13-4-smp/kernel/net/ieee80211/ieee80211_crypt_wep.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.16.13-4-smp/updates/ieee80211_crypt-r8180.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.16.13-4-smp/updates/ieee80211_crypt_wep-r8180.ko
Above files found. Remove? [y],n y
grep: /lib/modules/2.6.16.13-4-smp/build//.config: No such file or directory
grep: /lib/modules/2.6.16.13-4-smp/build//include/linux/autoconf.h: No such file or directory
ieee80211 symbols are found from /lib/modules/2.6.16.13-4-smp/build/Module.symvers. Do you want to strip them? [y],n y
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.16.13-4-smp/build M=/home/nathan/Desktop/ieee80211-1.2.15 modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.16.13-4-obj/i386/smp'
make[1]: *** No rule to make target `modules'. Stop.
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.16.13-4-obj/i386/smp'
make: *** [modules] Error 2
ollie:/home/nathan/Desktop/ieee80211-1.2.15 # make install
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.16.13-4-smp/build M=/home/nathan/Desktop/ieee80211-1.2.15 modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.16.13-4-obj/i386/smp'
make[1]: *** No rule to make target `modules'. Stop.
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.16.13-4-obj/i386/smp'
make: *** [modules] Error 2
ollie:/home/nathan/Desktop/ieee80211-1.2.15 #

As far as the "ifconfig wlan0 up" went, it told me there was no such device.

Again, any help you can give will be much appreciated.

I think maybe I am a little smarter now. I tried to add the driver ipw3945 (which is for my wireless card) to the kernel using modprobe. I'm good so far right?

ollie:/tmp/windrivers # modprobe ipw3945
WARNING: Could not open '/lib/modules/2.6.16.13-4-smp/kernel/net/ieee80211/ieee80211_crypt.ko': No such file or directory
WARNING: Could not open '/lib/modules/2.6.16.13-4-smp/kernel/net/ieee80211/ieee80211.ko': No such file or directory

So now I see that ipw3945 needs some of those ieee80211 files to run. But when i tried to install ieee80211, it also yielded an error, which i stated in an earlier reply, it seems that some files in /lib/modules/2.6.16.13-4-smp/build/ are missing. In fact, the only thing in that /build directory is something called module.symvers

Am I missing an important part of linux here or what?

Have you recompiled the kernel as instructed by the ieee80211 drivers?
You need to remove all driver for that from the kernel and then run the ieee80211 drivers and remove the rest of them if I recall correctly.
After that the ipw3945 firmware and module should install ok and should start to work.