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Requirements

A PCI/miniPCI or Cardbus card with an Atheros chipset.
Please refer to Compatibility on which wireless cards are supported by the MadWifi driver.

root privileges for the machine on which you intend to install MadWifi.
For Debian, Ubuntu and related systems run as root: apt-get install build-essential perl
For Red Hat, Fedora and related systems run as root: yum install gcc make perl
Generally, make sure you have gcc, libc headers, make and perl

Linux Kernel 2.4.23+ and 2.6.x series
- Others may work, but are unsupported; also, beware if using the very latest release candidate (RC#) kernel as it may not yet be supported
Kernel Source and Headers of running kernel (distribution provided kernel development package should be OK)
Wireless Extensions support in kernel
- v14+ required, v17+ recommended; option CONFIG_NET_RADIO=y (kernel 2.6.22 and later: CONFIG_WLAN_80211=y)
Sysctl support in kernel
- option CONFIG_SYSCTL=y
Crypto API support in kernel
- option CONFIG_CRYPTO=y
AES support (for WPA networks)
- option CONFIG_CRYPTO_AES=m

Use cat /boot/config-2.6.26-1-686 grep CONFIG_CRYPTO_AES

Use the kernel config guide to help set these kernel options.

gcc -- The same GCC version used to compile the kernel
- otherwise, "Invalid module format" errors may occur
subversion -- If you choose to get the most recent MadWifi code, you'll need to check it out of our Subversion repository.
make -- Used to automatically build programs.
perl -- Used by Madwifi Makefile to generate code
C libraries -- Standard C libraries needed for successful compilation (Type: sudo apt-get install build-essential)
madwifi -- Download the latest MadWifi driver.

iwconfig -- Used to connect to a wireless network; often called wireless-tools by distributions.
wpa_supplicant -- Used to join a network with WPA encryption; often called wpasupplicant by distributions.

Please check your Linux distribution for more specific information.