Well this was way easier than my attempts in Ubuntu 9.10. Kernel 2.6.32 comes with drivers for RTL8192SU which apparently work with the RTL8188SU.
The trick is, you need to tell the driver to load for this particular device.
This is what I needed to run:
echo 'install r8192s_usb modprobe --ignore-install r8192s_usb ; /bin/echo "0bda 8171" > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/rtl819xU/new_id' | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/r8192s_usb.conf sudo ln -s /lib/firmware/RTL8192SE /lib/firmware/RTL8192SU sudo modprobe -rf r8192s_usb sudo modprobe r8192s_usb