Comment 1 for bug 126220

I'm having troubles with the hostap driver, too. I have a Thinkpad T30 whose wireless support seems to break in different ways with each new release :-(

I've found that if I blacklist hostap_pci in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist, reboot, then _manually_ load hostap_pci (sudo modprobe hostap_pci), I can connect using the network administrative applet.

Still missing orinoco_pci, though...