Hi, I cannot get the nVidia drivers to work with Mandriva 2009 64-bit distro.
I have downloaded the latest driver from nVidia website. I switched to init 3 and when I tried to install the driver the display lost spacing and it lookedsomethinglikethisspittingoutabounchoferrors.
I wouldn't mind 'no spacing' but the text started overlapping and it was completely unreadable. Fianlly it failed an didn't install the driver.
I installed the nVidia driver in Mandrake 10, the same exact way, and at that time the kernel had to be updated. It was done automatically, by installer, and it worked fine for a couple of years. It was time to switch to a 64-bit motherboard this year. I just can't get it to work..
I use nVidia GeForce 4 with 128Mb of ram on it.
Has anyone ever seen this? Any advice will be appreciated.

By latest drivers, do you mean the 177.80 ones? If so, these don't support the 4 series cards so you'll need to download the legacy drivers.

So you downloaded and tried to install the 64-bit nvidia drivers right ?

Hopefully you do have the kernel source and headers installed. Also what exact video card do you have, is it on the supported list ?

well, I tried the legacy drivers but it didn't work. I got the same garbled messages during the driver installation.
I notice one strange thing also - the installer asks for some basic system files. It requested the packages called 'binutils' 'gcc' and 'make'.
Isn't that supposed to be installed WITH the basic system?
I'm using nVidia GeForce 4, with 128Mb of RAM and Mandriva Linux 2009.0 Free64 installation disc.
It was not easy to find that distro - all that's available on Mandriva's site is 32-bit. I'm not even sure where I found the 64-bit version..
Is 2009.0 Free64 the latest revision?
I'd really appreciate some step by step instructions how to get it to work.
I'm not a Linux guru but I like it's stability. Could someone help me a little more that 'RTFM"??
thanks

The drivers should be in the repository. Look for a menu entry that reads "add/remove software" or something like that. You may have to experiment a bit because the GUI may not show all the available packages by default (there is a combo box somewhere at the top to set the selection you would like to see). If you select the nvidia legacy driver, it will take care of all the rest. You may still need to run a check though (FXDrake or whatever it is called).