Realtek 8180L is a very common chip set found in many devices (eg. Acer Aspire 1356LCi laptop). It is identified with lspci command as

00:09.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8180L 802.11b MAC (rev 20)

In Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) it is supported out of the box with a open-source driver. This driver supports unencrypted networks and WEP protected networks. However it looks like more advanced encryption (like WPA) is not available with open-source driver (see this and this).

However it is possible to install binary driver from Realtek with help of ndiswrapper and thus have access to more advanced encryption.

Steps for instalation:

1. Install following packages: ndiswrapper-common ndiswrapper-utils-1.8 ndisgtk wpasupplicant network-manager network-manager-gnome.

2. Find a binary driver for Windows 98 Second Edition on Realtek site and download it (direct link).

3. Unpack downloaded zip file to /opt (root privileges might be required).
4. Disable open-source driver (it will conflict with closed source). Open /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist file with text editor (eg. with gksudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist). Then add the following two lines to the end of the list:

blacklist r818x
blacklist ieee80211_rtl 

1. Go to System->Adminsitration->Windows Wireless Drivers and install downloaded driver. More about installing ndiswrapper here

2. Use Network Manager to configure access to your WPA protected network.