Quoting Cameron Showalter cameron@gwschool.com:
there are a lot of resources out there regarding general linux compatibility with wireless cards, however alot of outdated. You can still find some very useful information. The problem ends up being using any sort of encryption other than WEP with newer cards that support WPA, WPA2, etc... I have successfully used a Zyxel G-102v2 802.11g card with different distros including Centos 4.x on an unencrypted network or with WEP, but when I try to get WPA working I run into a wall because the windows drivers don't work with ndiswrapper.
That's exactly why I'm asking for recommendations. I'll need to buy the thing, stick it in laptop, and it has to work right away. WAP would be high on the list of features. However WEP-only might be usable too. If it doesn't work out of the box, I won't be able to browse the net to search for solution (or additional software). Because my wireless card doesn't work. By the time I'll be able to connect laptop to some wire, I won't really need the card anymore (well, I'll need it someday in the future again, but what I really need it for is this next trip I'll be making).
If there's nothing like this for CentOS, Fedora Core is an option too.