I've got the Lucent "Orinoco Silver" card. You just slide it into the slot on a laptop running Ubuntu or Linux. (Behinds the scenes, the hotplug system recognizes it, loads the driver, and runs the DHCP client. The DHCP client gets client and gateway addresses, loads the routing table, and writes the resolver file. But you don't see any of that, you're just on the net automatically.) If it were any more automatic it would be a macintosh. Several cheapie generic 802.11b cards use the same chip set. The Belkin card with the Atmel chip set works the same way.
If you bought hardware that doesn't have Linux drivers, it's your fault for choosing hardware from a vendor that enables the monopoly. Your punishment is you will have to fool around with the NDIS Wrapper kernel module and the MS-Windows driver that came with the card. On Debian-derivatives like Knoppix, apt-get install ndiswrapper-utils-1.9, if it isn't there already. Try the iwconfig command to find out.
If you really screwed up, you've got wifi hardware with the Atheros chips, and you need the madwifi package to drive it. apt-get install madwifi-tools and read the manpage about the wlanconfig program.
Lucky for you you're using a Debian derived operating system so it's pretty easy to find and install stuff. Learn to use http://packages.debian.org and apt-get (or aptitude or synaptic) as well as whatever came on your CD or in your distribution. Notice the list of files shown on each package's page. That's one place you can find exactly what programs are in each package and which manpages to read. For example, go to http://packages.debian.org/stable/net/madwifi-tools and follow the "list of files" link for i386. Notice there are several files in /sbin and /usr/sbin. Those are the programs in that package.
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