I've just installed Debian Lenny and generally am impressed with how well things are auto detected and configured - so much easier than a few years ago - and in many ways easier than a Windows install where you have to constantly find 3rd party drivers to get things working.
However getting wifi running was a bit trickier (largely because of FCC regulations affecting licenses and default settings).
This document got me most of the way
http://wiki.debian.org/iwlwifi [1]
Additional lines in /etc/.network/interfaces
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
pre-up ip link set wlan0 up
wpa-driver wext
wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.confand wpa_supplicant.conf looks like
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
network={
ssid="mynetwork"
psk="mypassword"
}And it's all working...
This old bug seems to be fixed
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/288401 [2]
Links:
[1] http://wiki.debian.org/iwlwifi
[2] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/ source/linux/ bug/288401