The Intel Centrino platform is just a brand-name for the Intel processor coupled with an Intel wireless ethernet chip -- either the Intel PRO/Wireless 2100, Intel PRO/Wireless 2100A, Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG, or the Intel PRO/Wireless 2915ABG.
There are two ways to get centrino drivers working on linux:
Network Driver Interface Specification (or NDIS) defines a standard API for network interface card drivers. NDIS wraps the details of a NIC's hardware implementation with a "Media Access Controller" (MAC) device driver -- so that all NIC's for the same media (e.g., Ethernet) can be accessed using a common programming interface.
The ndiswrapper is a kernel module which maps the linux API to NDIS, and can be used to run all NDIS-compliant windows drivers. Alternatively, you can use some ndis utility application like linuxant's driver loader.
You can use hotplug to load the firmware at boot time. To do this, you must enable hotplug firmware loading support (CONFIG_FW_LOADER), and place the appropriate firmware in your firmware directory.
I have tested the Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG drivers on: