These Live CDs should allow you to check out WiFi without having to
waste time installing to your hard drive.

In other messages, that never showed up...I was going to suggest you
give PuppyLinux.com a try since their 4.1 version came out within the
past month. Puppy has been very good at configuring WiFi, and will at
least put you in a better mood if you can have a teeny Linux success,
before fixing the WiFi for the Big Distros.

Your particular Atheros chipset is obviously too new to be handled by
many OSes.