Comment 7 for bug 125832

orinoco_* were disabled intentionally by Ben Collins back in late April under some incorrect assumptions. While it is true that the hostap driver is often a better choice for anyone with a Prism 2/2.5/3 -based card the orinoco drivers support two other chipsets (from Symbol and Lucent) which are not supported by hostap - they are not the same chipset. This is explained in greater detail on this page: http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Orinoco.html

The ideal solution would be to give priority (if that's possible!) to hostap but supply orinoco as well for cards not supported by hostap.