laptop wireless problems
 

Hi,
I am a newbie. I have windows xp on my Inspiron 3800 laptop. It is slow and cranky. I wanted to try linux on a spare hard drive. I downloaded several livecds. I wanted a variety, some that were fast and light.
I have tried, dsl, pclinuxos,slaxlive,kanotix mini-cpx,beatrix,vector live, and memphis.
I really liked pclinuxos,slax,and vector. Memphis is nice, but I only have an old version. The newer ISOs I have tried, haven't worked.
So, my big problem is, I can't get wireless to work on any distro. I have a DWL-G630 wireless card.
Slax has a nice tutorial on configuring a wireless card, but I just don't understand how to write the commands needed. I can copy what is in front of me, but I have no clue what it means. How do I get past this hump? I don't understand how to use iwconfig and ndiswrapper.
Thanks,

Brad - I'm using a DWL-G650 on my laptop with MadWifi (madwifi.org) (Slack 10.2/2.6.x). There is a SlackBuild script that builds the package for you - you only have to modify a couple of config files. Check your chipset version - I think they changed somewhere along the way. Scroll down to the bottom of the download page for the "distrobution-specific instructions" - I struggled for a while too and it suddenly fell together in a snap.
Cheers,