My Wi-Fi connection works on all Linux systems but none of the OS X distributions
The could be a couple of things going on, hardware or software. Let's eliminate software.

Go to /Library/Preferences and look for the ones that start with "com.apple.network" I have three of them. Delete them and reboot.

Now go back into your network preference pane. Any VPNs you set up will be gone and you should have the default list of all interfaces with network capability. Select the WiFi interface and configure that as you like.

What I am thinking is possible that you have a damaged preference file associated with networking (hopefully I didn't miss any preference files...). Doing this will give you a clean slate with network settings. 

If that doesn't do it, you may have a hardware issue, which means time for an Apple Genius appointment.