Of the five or six distros I have tried to run my wireless network on, the only one I've had consistent success in is Xandros, for some reason. I got the network running once in Mandrake, but then went distro-hopping, and when I reinstalled Mandrake later, I couldn't duplicate whatever I had done. I've used Xandros twice, and both times, my network runs smoothly and sets up easily in it. I recommend Xandros to anyone who wants to use a wireless network. (Don't bother trying MEPIS; it doesn't even detect the network.)

Post Script: I *don't* recommend Xandros for any other reason. It's buggy. (The open circulation edition, at least.)

Xandros probably works pretty well. (How could it not, it is a Debian derivative.) But I suspect that the reason it handles your wireless card seamlessly is that they have incorporated proprietary drivers into their kernel. This is a gray area (so I'm told) in the GPL, but there is no doubt that it goes against the spirit, if not the letter, of the Free Software concept.

It'll never get on my computer.

Well, my apologies, but I choose to view it more pragmatically. As long as the GPL isn't destroyed (by lawsuits from Microsoft or some other company, perhaps), a violation of its spirit doesn't bother me very much, since it did get my network running.

But if not for that, it wouldn't get on my computer, either. Its applications crash frequently for me.

Although somewhat off-topic (you have my apology in advance), you might consider trying SUSE 10.0. (Version 10.1 is not yet behaving itself, so I would not recommend it at this time.) Setting up a wireless network with SUSE is quite simple. I have done it without issue more than once. SUSE does not have Xandros' instability issues either.