Well I thought I'd start with a little wireless network at home..on Linux of course. 
So I plugged in a D-Link access point (DWL-2000AP+) into the switch and got that up and running pretty quickly. However then the trouble began.
I got myself a DWL-G650+ (Note the +). After searching the prism54.org website I found this card to be supported at least I thought it was. Great, a native linux kernel module. This module is even already in the gentoo-dev-sources(Gentoo's 2.6 kernel) that I use on my laptop. However, after compiling, there was no card detected. Seems that little plus ment that there is a complete different chipset on that card. What I would have needed(and did ask for at the store) was a DWL-G650 A1. Ok whatever, I can get this card to work too, right? So I started searching for a suitable driver. Seems the guys at http://acx100.sf.net were willing to do this. So let's get this card up and running. That's pretty much how far I got. It ran, but without wep encryption. This module doesn't seems to support that part "yet".
Time to head to the store again tomorrow and see whether I can change it for the one that I asked for in the first place.... I'll keep you posted.