when i do a fresh installation of ubuntu my xserver is all white passed the login screen. i have found that the only thing that will remedy this is the installation of a deb i acquired when i had a different video card called envy 3.97. this apparently downloads and installs the latest nvidia driver for ubuntu and recompiles the kernel. i am wondering if envy is the only remedy to this problem of the "white screen" or if there is something i can do to get visible prompts in the xserver so that i can be functional with something other than a mouse pointer.

thanks