Easy is boring (Anyone tried a kernel 2.4.xx distro?)

Welll.......................
The official (vendor, not kernel) Realtek driver supports Linux 2.4 & 2.6, and so does Madwifi.
Both ALSA & OSS sound work on here, with 2.6.xx.

So, I figured that an old (kernel 2.4.xx) distro could work.
Here's what I found:
1. Zipslack is preinstalled, not live.
It wouldn't boot here, but that may be the archiver.

2. I tried Dapper (with 2.4.27), installed via debootstrap, chroot, & manual config.
It booted to a prompt, but...
X would not work. It was compiled against kernel 2.6.12.

3. Third try's the charm:
DeLi Linux, 2.4.36.4/2.4.37.5
Boots fine, setup X & mouse, don't start gpm/net.
Getting X working was never so exciting!
uclibc doesn't like utf8. In other words--to install madwifi, you MUST run through all the steps (untar sources through install) in one login, without starting X.
So:
Download kernel.org kernel source, DeLi ports, & madwifi-hal-10.5.6;
Extract ports in DeLi /, linux-2.4.3x.x in /usr/src/, madwifi anywhere;
reboot in deli, install binutils;
untar linux-2.4.3x.x in /usr/src/
cd /usr/src/linux*; make menuconfig
-->Select Load Alternate Configuration> /ports/core/linux/.config-ide
Exit/save
cd /path/to/madwifi
make KERNELPATH="/usr/src/linux-2.4.36.4/" clean,
make KERNELPATH="/usr/src/linux-2.4.36.4/" ,
make KERNELPATH="/usr/src/linux-2.4.36.4/" install;
REBOOT!
If modprobe ath_hal is not the first command after boot, expect a hard freeze.
modprobe ath_pci
(ERROR: blah blah blah)
modprobe ath_pci
(works)
ifconfig wifi0 up
(segfault if you didn't modprobe twice)
wlanconfig ath0 create wlandev wifi0 wlanmode sta
And-discover that wireless tools must be compiled/installed from source.

So that's where I am.
If you're masochistic enough to think that's fun, the site is http://www.delilinux.org/

http://www.delilinux.de/forum/topic.php?post=3559#post3559 has some explanations...