Note: The information here is out-dated; the driver is probably in with the standard Hardy modules now I expect, and it's certainly present for Intrepid. The signal strength reading still seems broken, but otherwise, it has been working flawlessly for me.
OK, so I've mentioned before on a few occasions that there is a newer version of this driver, which is essentially a port of the same original code over to the mac80211 stack that was recently added to the kernel. This new rtl8180 module is now in the mainline kernel and is being backported for Hardy as part of a "wireless compatibility stack" in the linux-modules-backports package. It's a good idea to use this driver in preference to my patched copy of the older r8180 module source here, not least because it supports the later WEXT extensions that allow you to use WPA through the standard graphical tools.
From what I can tell based on comments and other messages received, almost everyone has been able to get basic wireless, either unsecured or using WEP, working in Hardy using the sources and guides that I published here. However, WPA has been less successful. It worked fine for me and some others have commented that it worked for them too, but just as many people seem to have had trouble with it. I'm not sure what all the variables could be there, and to be honest I don't think it's worth the trouble to find out. That is because there is an alternative solution using this new driver just around the corner, and you can use it right now so long as you're willing to jump a couple of revisions ahead with the kernel.
So far as I can tell from the file list, the new module (rtl8180.ko) is not present in the current version (2.6.24-19.17) of the linux-backports-modules-hardy package sitting in the hardy-updates repository. I've never been 100% sure about the subtle distinctions between the various repositories, or at least not enough to know whether the latest versions go into hardy-updates or hardy-backports etc. to see when the magic version finally turns up, or even if it might actually be there already somewhere (if it is I can't find it, but like I say, I might be looking in the wrong places). So for now the best advice I can give is to just add Tim Gardner's Launchpad PPA to your software sources and use whatever version of linux-backports-modules-hardy is available in there:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/timg-tpi/ubuntu hardy main
Note that this will also install a slightly updated version of the kernel that is not yet in the main Hardy repositories. I'm currently using this kernel (2.6.24-20 at the time of writing) without any issues, and all the previous revisions through the 2.6.24-19 series from this PPA worked fine for me also. But you do have to understand that it is a pre-release revision so there are fewer guarantees. Also, whilst the same PPA contains corresponding versions of all the usual drivers (i.e. linux-ubuntu-modules and linux-restricted-modules) built against the newer kernel, there may be other kernel modules from the main or 3rd party repositories that are not available for this kernel version (I can't immediately think of any specific examples, but I expect there must be some).
So it is important to bear that in mind and to remember to remove the PPA from your sources as soon as rtl8180 hits the main repositories. I will try to keep an eye on the situation and update the article here when it happens, but don't count on that!
Anyway, you can either edit /etc/apt/sources.list and add the repository (using the "deb..." line given above) manually, or do the same thing through the Software Sources option under System->Administration, or Settings->Repositories to get to it from directly within Synaptic.
Once the repository is added, if you did it with a GUI method, I think the new indexes will get downloaded automatically, otherwise (or just to make sure) run:
sudo apt-get update
Then you have to install the backported modules package:
sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-hardy
Ignore (by pressing "y") any warnings about installing unauthenticated packages. As already explained, this set of updates will have to install a newer kernel, so you will need to reboot before you can test the driver. I found that I had to add rtl8180 to the /etc/modules file to cause it to load automatically, but there have been a few updates to this package since then so that may no longer be the case. If you find that the driver has not loaded after a restart, just do:
sudo modprobe rtl8180
That should be enough. Give nm-applet (for those who don't know, that's the program name of the little network management tool you get by default in the top-right corner in the Gnome desktop) a few seconds to realise what just happened and then you should be able to see a list of networks by clicking on that icon, as per normal. You should also find that WPA(2) is now available as an encryption option. So if everything is working for you now, that's all there is to it. If you had to modprobe the driver manually just finish the job with:
echo rtl8180 | sudo tee -a /etc/modules
...to cause the driver to load automatically on boot.
