Hi,
I understand that this a rather common subject but I have some basic questions about nvidia drivers and Mandrake (9.1 and 9.2).
I have used 9.1 for a long time but I was never able to install nvidia's drivers properly (card GForce 2 MX). I tried twice and both times my X system ended in such a mess that I had to reinstall Mandrake. What bothered me the most was that I was unable to uninstall the drivers. X crashed even after removing them and restoring the X-config files.
Anyway, now I have Mandrake 9.2 and before trying once more I want some advice:
Is there a real problem with my card type?
What is the story about the sources needed for installing the drivers and where can I get it from?

Thanks!

You have to install kernel source and kernel headers packages.
Ater that you have to exit X in order to launch nvidia drivers with the command sh nvidia*******.run , as a root of course.
Last step edit your /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 and change driver=nv to driver=nvidia
Restart X.
This works for 9.1
I failed to achieve install on 9.2 from the club.
I didnt try on official 9.2.

For 9.2 you have to download the kernel source from an FTP mirror matched to whichever revision of kernel you have. At 40MB it's not fun on 56k Once that's installed, the script will compile and install the drivers and glx core successfully.

Usual thing next of changing the driver from nv to nvidia. For some card/monitor combinations you have to tweak the monitor horizontal and vertical refresh rates in order for it to find a suitable screenmode it can use.

In the "device" section, it's worth ensuring that you always have Option "DPMS" in there.

For 9.2, it's an imperfect installation. The kernel headers package is not available to those that don't pay, so any attempt to use TwinView, advanced features (like FSAA) etc crash with a bunch of unresolved symbols. If you want to get these working, you'll have to compile your own kernel from source. Trying to work out what dependencies Mandrake have in their system is the fun part - there is a standard buried somewhere in their CVS archives, but it's a bit out of date (2.4.19).

I just downloaded the updated kernel (-22mdk) and compiled it with the config that came with it without digging through anything. I then complied a new nvidia driver and FSAA works fine. I never tried FSAA with the -10mdk though.