IPW2200 does not work for me out of the box with 2.6.25-gentoo-r6 kernel. At least not the connections that are WEP "encrypted", and I don't have any other types or free ones around me to try non-WEP. It sees the ESSID's fine but fails to acquire an IP with NetworkManager. It is workaround by adding hwcrypto=0 option to the ipw2200 module - then it works fine as in other distributions, but out of the box I'm left with a non-working Internet at GUADEC conference, having to mess with this for a day with an Ubuntu LiveCD (internet access for, well, ipw2200-firmware downloading, information seeking..), chrooting, listening to a BoF, rebooting, hearing some ubuntu start sounds out loud in the conference room from another reboot, et cetera :(
I don't mean that other distributions are making this work with hwcrypto=0 - I haven't checked
Note that I will have access to this hardware only until 15th July.
does this work for you on more recent kernels?