My laptop is running Centrino with the IPW2200 as the Wi-Fi. Here, I describe the way to build a kernel to support it.

Firstly, download the kernel source, definitely. At the time of writing, I used the kernel version 2.6.8.1 for that. Afterwards, several things more to do:

  • Download the IPW2200 driver from http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net. At the time of writing, it is version 0.7 and named ipw2200-0.7.tgz
  • Extract the kernel source, and go to drivers/net/wireless, then extract ipw2200-0.7.tgz here
  • Rename the directory ipw2200-0.7 to just ipw2200
  • Back to the root of your kernel source, and run this command: patch -p1 < drivers/net/wireless/ipw2200/patches/ipw2200-2.6.8-patch
  • make menuconfig and make up your components, then build
  • Finished

With a new kernel supporting Wi-Fi, and with the firmware (downloaded from http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net) placed inside /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware, I’ve did modprobe ipw2200 and a new Wi-Fi device is up.

Afterwards, I can simply use the wireless tools (e.g. iwconfig, iwlist) to set up other stuff and play.