OK, this is how i got my Geforce 2 MX to work under Mandrake 8.0, I'm posting the fix to my own question because it seems like a lot of people are having problems with linux and GeForce 2s, so i hope this helps someone.
go to
http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?PAGE=linux, and download the the kernel and GLX files.
Get the gzipped tar files because I've heard about problems with the RPMs.
I'm referring to the files as NVIDIA_kernel.tar.gz and NVIDIA_GLX.tar.gz, but you should
use the names appropriate for the ones you downloaded.
Set X so that it doesn't start up when you turn on your computer. Change directories to
where you downloaded the files, mine were in /nvidia.
First to unzip the kernel
gunzip NVIDIA_kernel.tar.gz
tar -xvf NVIDIA_kernel.tar
Now you will have a directory for the Nvidia kernel, change directories to there, then type
make SYSINCLUDE=/usr/src/linux/include
After that we need to get rid of the following mesa files that could get in the way by doing
the following: (don't worry if you don't have all of these files)
cd /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/extensions
mv libGLcore.a libGLcore.a.mesa
mv libglx.a libglx.a.mesa
cd /usr/X11R6/lib
mv libGL.so libGL.so.mesa
mv libGL.so.1 libGL.so.1.mesa
mv libGL.so.1.0 libGL.so.1.0.mesa
mv libGL.so.1.2 libGL.so.1.2.mesa
mv libGL.so.1.2.0 libGL.so.1.2.0.mesa
Now we can take care of the GLX file, so cd back to where you put that and:
gunzip NVIDIA_GLX.tar.gz
tar -xvf NVIDIA_GLX.tar
Ok you should have a directory for the GLX file, cd to there and type
make
We're almost done here now we just configure X, type
xf86config
when it got to the video card section I just picked the original Geforce, for our purposes it's
close enough for now.
You'll need to know your monitors horizontal and vertical sync ranges, and the amount of memory
on your video card in kb (mine was 32768), and some info about yer mouse and keyboard. After
that's done we just need to modify our XF86Config-4 file. Do that by typing
mcedit /etc/X11/XF86Config-4. In the modules section make sure you have the following
Load "dbe"
Load "glx
SubSection "extmod"
EndSubSection
Load "type1"
Load "freetype"
Under the Graphics Device Section look for the following:
Driver "nv"
Change this so it says:
Driver "nvidia"
Then save the file and exit midnight commander, you may want to reboot before starting X.
After that I installed Quake 3 to find out it runs faster under windows 2000, but looks
better under linux.