I've never had any problems with either the current or previous nvidia drivers.
Suggestion the first is to use a different distro. The only distro I give a second of consideration is Slackware 8. Others swear by Debian Woody. Mandrake has the same problems that make me hate Windows so much: it's damn near impossible to fix problems when they come up.
Suggestion the second is to use the tar.gz packages. This procedure never fails me:
1. Exit X (the graphical environment) if you're in it. Use the "Logout" or "Exit" option of your window manager if it has one, else just hit ctrl-alt-backspace.
2. Unpack the NVIDIA-kernel and NVIDIA-GLX tarballs.
tar xzvf NVIDIA-kernel<tab>
tar xzvf NVIDIA-GLX<tab>
3. Enter kernel driver directory
cd NVIDIA-kernel<tab>
4. Build driver.
make
5. Enter GLX driver directory
cd ../NVIDIA-GLX<tab>
6. Install GLX driver.
make install
7. Open up XFree86 config
vim /etc/X11/XF86Config (add -4 to the end if you're using mandrake)
8. Go down until you find a block like this:
<< Section "Device"
Identifier "NVIDIA GeForce"
Driver "nv"
#VideoRam 65536
# Insert Clocks lines here if appropriate
EndSection >>
Replace the "nv" with "nvidia".
9. If you want a nice little cursor shadow, like in Win2K and WinXP, Add this line before the "EndSection" line in the block I mentioned in step 8:
Option "CursorShadow" "1"
10. Start your X server.
startx
When X starts, you should see an nVidia logo for a second or so before your normal wallpaper takes over.
