Before you start, you must know which kernel you’re using. You can do it like this:

$ uname -r

I currently have rpms for Red Hat 8 and 9, Fedora Core 1 and 2, Mandrake 10.0, and SuSE 9.0 and 9.1. If you don’t find a driver for your combination of distribution and kernel, you must build a package. Don’t worry, it’s not difficult. After a successfull install, the network must be configured.

If you’re running a kernel older than 2.4.20, you can forget about these drivers. It will not work.
Kernel 2.6.x

The driver consists of two parts. The driver requires a copy of the firmware on your hard-drive. This is safer than using/flashing the firmware on the card itself. The package is independent of your distribution and kernel: Download orinoco-usb-firmware.noarch.rpm and install the package with

$ su
(root password)
$ rpm -Uvh orinoco-usb-firmware.noarch.rpm

Important: Do not attempt to install the kernel-dependent part of the driver if the above step failed. It will not work.

Now you will have to install the kernel-specific part of the driver. They are located in this directory. Install the driver as follows:

rpm -Uvh orinoco-CVS_*86.rpm

or for the latest drivers

rpm -Uvh km_orinoco-*86.rpm

If you can’t find a rpm matching your kernel and distro, you will have to build one yourself. All my machines are running SUSE 9.1, so I can’t build rpms for other distros.