Hi,
I just installed Linux for the first time last night. I am using RedHat 7 with a geforce2 MX video card and initally had the same problems as yourself.
A quick boot back into windoze and a search of the web found the answer to my problems in the form of this article:
http://www.evil3d.net/articles/linux.../printer.shtml
I ran Xconfigurator first (just type "Xconfigurator" at the prompt) and went through the steps. I can't remember exactly what I did but I know that I selected "Don't probe" and selected all the defaults and that I selected my monitor and various video resolutions.
Once Xconfigurator was finished (it just said "Starting X Server" or something, brought up a blue screen and then left me at the command prompt - not too reassuring!) I followed the rest of the article word for word.
I ran the ls /usr/src command and it showed that I had linux, linux-2.2.16 and redhat so I skipped the next two bullet-pointed steps and continued on at "NVIDIA Kernel Drivers".
If any of that doesn't make any sense then don't worry, just print out the article I pointed you towards and follow it - it's easy!
Once everything's installed okay just use the command "startx" to start your x server!
A few other tips:
I didn't need to use the "insmod sgpgart agp_try_unsupported=1" stuff but used it anyway just to be safe.
Once you've got everything working properly go to applications>gedit and open your /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file, find the line (under the "Screen 0" section) that sets the default colour depth/resolution or something and change it from 8 to 16. There's no point having a Geforce2 MX only to run it in 256 colours!
You'll have to have downloaded the NVidia tar files from
http://www.nvidia.com/Products/Drivers.nsf/Linux.html
Just in case you didn't know about this, Linux doesn't automatically read MSDOS formatted floppies, you have to "mount" the floppy first:
mount -t msdos /dev/floppy /mnt/floppy
You can then access the floppy through /mnt/floppy and can copy the nvidia files to your root directory (so that you can follow the tutorial - it's all done from the root directory) by using a command such as
cp /mnt/floppy/NVIDIA... /
where "..." is the rest of the filename.
Alternatively an easier way to access MSDOS disks is through the use of the mdir and mcopy commands:
To see what's on the a: drive (floppy):
mdir a:
To copy a file from the a: drive (floppy to root in this case):
mcopy a:foo.txt /
I both these cases the "m" stands for "msdos"
I hope that's all of help to you!
If you need any more help then my e-mail address is conor@ceonsystems.com
All the best...
Conor