Problems with nVidia drivers
 

Hello,

First of all, I want you to know that this is my very first time experimenting with any kind of Linux distro, so whenever you give your responses, please make sure to include an explanation on how to do certain things and run commands, since I am newbie and I will most likely not know how to figure it out (installed Linux less then 6 hours ago).

My system:
CPU: AMD Athlon 2000+
512 MB DDR RAM
40 GB IDE HDD
GeForce4 Ti4800SE Graphics card
SoundBlaster Live! Sound card
Asus A7V8X-X Motherboard
(Please ask if there's anything else you need to know; I might be able to get the info.)

Linux:
Mandrake 10.0 Community
Kernel 2.6.3

With all that said, I will get to the actual problem. Earlier this day, I installed Linux Mandrake, and except for a few problems with USB, everything went pretty smooth.
However, now I've been messing around and trying to get the latest NVIDIA drivers to work for hours it seems.
Here's an overview of what I've done/what errors have happened:

Downloaded the latest Linux drivers (v. 1.0.5336) from the NVIDIA website.
Installed the Kernel-Source
Installed the NVIDIA drivers - at this point, the driver installer tells me that there is no kernel template matching my kernel and that it has to compile one. (Although I thought the new drivers supported Kernel 2.6?)
Completed driver installation
Updated the XF86Config-4 file in dir /etc/X11/
This is where the problems start coming in. At first reboot, I receive an error from the nvidia kernel system (I will attempt to figure out exactly what the error said, and post it later). This prevents me from getting into the X Server.
Then I go back and undo the changes I made in the XF86Config-4 file
(the only changes that were done was renaming 'nv' to 'nvidia' under the module device section; everything else seemed to have been taken care of in advance, so I didn't need to do the other changes).
After the changes are undone, I can succesfully start the X Server again. However, with no OpenGL support.

I have tried reinstalling the drivers numerous times, and at one point X Server actually started up without any problems, and with the NVIDIA logo. In spite of this, I still had no OpenGL support, and the 3D games or screensavers I have refuse to run.
If I remember correctly, I actually had full OpenGL support at one point, where I was able to run TuxRacer and the GL screensavers, but on the next reboot, all this seemed to have been discarded.

This is where I am now: the NVIDIA driver installed, with no changes done to the XF86Config4 file, and I seem stuck at this point; I can't figure out any other solutions or combinations.
If anyone has any tips, or a guide that will help me configure the drivers properly, or possibly a different driver that works with GeForce cards, your suggestions are welcome.

Sorry if this post seems too long, but I felt it would be better and easier to solve for someone if I just explained everything I knew had happened.

Thanks in advance

you say everything seemed to be taken care of other than the driver itself ...
so with that said i have to question that, cause i personally can't see that being the case.

in the "Section "Module"
there are three things you have to make sure of :
first make sure that you have
Load "glx"
and second and third, make sure you remove or comment the following :
Load "dri"
Load "glCore"
if either or both of the above two don't even exist then don't worry about it
thats just all the less that you don't have to remove or comment :p

I think that you've got to modify XF86config and also you've got to be sure that in /etc/modules it now use nVidia instead of anything else. Than type in /etc/modules# modules update.

I've install nVidia drivers under Mandrake and it was easier than with Debian : )

Hope this helps, Marc A