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For laptops, I only use Intel cards like the 3945. Intel has open-sourced drivers, and all recent distros include them now and usually detect the card automatically. I read somewhere about Broadcom releasing open drivers for its cards, but I haven't used a Broadcom NIC and don't intend to unless I have no other (read Intel) choice.
I've also used Linksys PCI adapters in desktop machines. The one I tried was an older 802.11b card. It presented the normal Linksys ethernet interface to the OS and came up immediately as eth0.
I don't use encryption; my wireless routers have MAC address filtering to keep out unauthorized users. I don't really care if someone's sniffing my traffic since there'd be little to see. Most times I do credit purchases from a wired machine, and even if I'm using the laptop, the transaction is encrypted with SSL so the credit information is invisible anyway.
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