i'm pretty new to linux and very new to debian.

i just installed debian a few days ago and had one of the standard problems with xfree86 which was easily remedied by specifying my H and V scan rates. my display in gnome works just fine now.

however, graphics are sloooooow. i assume this is because i've not installed nvidia's driver. i'm using a 64MB geforce2 w/tv-out.

my questions are:

1. will this fix my problem
2. how do i easily install the driver using apt-get?

there are a few tutorials on the subject that i've read, none of which seem to work. their terminal commands always seem to give me errors no matter what lines i put in my sources.list file.

so could someone please, please tell me the quickest easiest way and dumb it down a lot, as i've never downloaded and compiled a kernel source and frankly am not sure what kernel version i'm even running right now.

Quick and easy way:

make sure your kernel sources are installed - apt-get them
go to the nvidia website and download the driver
make a copy of their instructions
close X - init 3 is what you need
following the nvidia instructions, install the driver (the installer does all the hard work for you)
restart X - either by rebooting or changing the init/run level
enjoy!

And Welcome to LQ

first, thanks for the welcome....

and what's this init stuff? i even haven't the slightest clue how to close out of x and run the OS as terminal only yet.

and in regard to the kernel sources, does it matter what kernel version? in other words, if i downloaded the source for a newer kernel version would it just update my kernel to that version when it installed the nvidia module?

No, you need the kernel sources for the kernel you have - in a terminal, run uname -r to find the version.

Read up on the nvidia docs on the website (www.nvidia.com) - the docs are very comprehensive.