I'm a total Linux Virgin so you'll hopefully bear with me. I just finished installing Mandrake Linux 9.1 beta on my Athlon Xp 1600+ w/512 MB RAM, Geforce 4 4200 ti MSI videocard a 16X Pioneer DVD-ROM drive an LG 32x CD burner, 40 gig Fujitsu (Win XP drive ) and a 20 gig Maxtor ( linux Drive) all on an Asus A7V 266 mobo. My install went relatively painless but when I started it for the first time any window I opened was all garbled and text was overlapped and so forth. I'm guessing this is because I don't have the proper drivers etc for my Video card. Therein lies my problem I found a NVIDIA kernel and a driver pak on the NVIDIA site but I have no idea how to install it and I don't want to make things worse. any advice I could get on this would be greatly appreciated

In the past, I've had NO LUCK at all with Nvidia's RPMs for the driver.. however, the tar.gz source files worked like a champ to get my MDK9.0 working on my laptop. Get those Source files and follow the Install/Readme PDF. That PDF should be in the same place as the source files/RPMS (I just downloaded them the other day -- waiting on MDK 9.1 to get out of RC2 status).

Good Luck.