I'm going to remove all my mod points here to answer what I had to do, to get my AR5007 to work on multiple Linux distributions.
What I did (this might be over your head, but I don't have time to explain every bit of it) was get the latest madwifi build from the svn. I don't know if Ubuntu keeps those modules in their repos, but you might want to check unstable for them. The latest ones support my AR5007, so I'd assume they would work for you.
And really now, before we throw slander lets see how 'easy' it is to install Vista on my Acer Aspire 5520. The one time I reinstalled it I had to download every driver from the manufacturer's website (on a different computer, as Vista didn't recognize the chipset, which is nearly everything). So my Linux installs have been VERY easy compared to my Windows installs (XP wasn't any fun either).