No links appeared, Chris.
Jodiendo, I would boot the system with a Trisquel LiveCD and test the
wireless; if it doesn't work, which is most probable, then I would teach my
(your) friend about what many companies do in order to have control of the
market: restrict the consumer/user's freedom of movement so he depends only
on some entity (company) to get support for the product. Sometimes he is even
forced to buy new "restricted" equipments to use some proprietary/restrictive
software he got from people/companies who has agreements with the producers
of such equipment... search for "planned obsolescence".
If my (your) friend really wanted that wi-fi card working, discarding the
hypothesis of buying friendly hardware which doesn't restrict his decisions,
then I would show him some GNU/Linux distribution which includes
proprietary/restrictive software -- after all, it's better to be restricted
only in what regards to wireless, BIOS and CPU microcode than to be
restricted in that and in everything else. I would do that keeping very clear
that, simultaneously, he is acquiring freedom in many ways but not in other
ways; and, if you do not have freedom in 100% of your machine, then you are
not free with it: there is no human percentage of freedom, you keep being
restricted, bounded to third parties' decisions.
Also, let's remember that, if he needs specialized applications like AutoCAD,
he may not be able to use it in GNU/Linux; perhaps in Wine (
http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=86 ), but
this is not guaranteed. Also, I bet there is unfortunately no comparable CAD
application for GNU/Linux.
If in last instance he can't use GNU/Linux only, you could manage to dual
boot it with Windows so he could use the one of his preference, or even
virtualize Windows within Trisquel or other distro, using e.g. VirtualBox,
available in Trisquel repositories.
If that would not happen, take a look at this list of Free Software programs
for Windows and, with his consentment, begin replacing the current installed
stuff for it: https://www.gnu.org/software/for-windows.html (there is many
compilations of Free Software for Windows; search for "OpenDisc", "Qumble",
"Valo-CD").
