I am a beginner linux user who started out on Mandrake and I am working my way up. I chose Debian because it was supposed to be very fast for emulation and I heard it has the best community around.

Installed Debian. No problems there. When i got to choose my video card, I selected "nv" for Nvidia. This computer has a geforce fx5200 in it. When i boot up and try to load the GUI it says something about my video card and lists the models the "nv" driver supports. Geforce cards dont seem to be mentioned. I realize that i can download the drivers i need and install them, but is there any other driver already on the system that will work? I would have a hard time getting the drivers and installing without the GUI already loaded.

I also selected my monitor at the end of installation. I wasnt sure what monitor i was going to be using permanently, or what the stats of that monitor were. I chose some default stuff and now i need to get back in order to change my possible resolution settings. How can i reconfigure that in debian? I know in something like Slackware, the "xorgsetup" command would work but obviously i cant seem to figure it out in debian. I would appreciate some help. Thanks.

You can run "xf86config" and just select the generic vesa driver. After you get a working display, you can download the nvidia driver.

You should always know your hardware. The drivers for your video card, horizontal and vertical monitor frequencies, the amount of video ram, etc. Google for your video driver (glx, perhaps?, i don't know).

Do a 'su':

#dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86

OR

install these packages for auto-detection:

#apt-get install mdetect read-edid discover x-window-system

reboot