802.11g that works out of the box

[fouldragon at aol.com]

So, as usual, I wanted to give Ubuntu 8.04 x86-64 edition it's regular 
once-every-six-months test to see if it approaches supporting my 
hardware this time.

It looked like wireless might actually work, when playing with the live 
disc, so I set it to install.

Of course, first time, I mess the install by insisting on installing to 
XFS; they then say "you can't install grub to XFS, install lilo 
instead", but lilo isn't on the disc.

So I try it another round and let it install to ext3.  The problem is, 
in the middle of this, I decide "I don't need the good wireless card, 
my PC is 3 metres from the router".  The "good" card is a rt61 chipset, 
apparently one of the most solid choices for Linux support.  I put in a 
family member's PC to clear out their reception issues-- their signal 
strength jumps from 25% to 75%.

So I try their card, which works fine in Vista, five bars signal.  It's 
like four years old, $22 when new, Marvell 8335 based.  I see a lot of 
"Marvell doesn't work well in 64-bit Linux" threads, but it seems like 
a lot of the stuff is ndiswrapper-oriented, which is the last thing I 
want to deal with,

Then I look at spare-backup-Athlon-XP-of-doom, which has a Realtek 
8185L chipset card in it.

Neither card works just by dropping it in the box.  No 'wlan0' device, 
no appearance in network-manager.

Are there any cards, aside from another RT61 card, which will really 
work just out of the box?  Did the installer not install every driver?  
(I thought usually distribution installers dumped everything on)

Alternatively, how much does it typically cost to wire a typical 
two-story, 2,000-square-foot home with about five Ethernet jacks, all 
wired to a panel in one room?  (looks at looming tax rebate...)