nVidia and X problems

[David Wright <ichbin@shadlen.org>]

I am using an AGP nVidia GeForce2 MX video card and am experiencing video problems. The screen, even in text mode, shows lots of flickering, horizontal lines.

The monitor is a 1600 x 1200 19" LCD; I can plug it into another machine and the image is beautiful, so I don't think the problem is in the monitor.

I have two new machines which each have this card, and both show this behaviour, so I don't think the problem is in the video card.

I suspect it is a driver problem. When I do lsmod, I see
	af_packet
	3c59x
	rtc
	unix
	ide-disk
	ide-probe-mod
	ide-mod
	ext2
no video card driver! My ATI radeon system at home shows
	radeon
	agpart
So could it be that I am using some generic driver and need to use the right one?

I don't need top 3D performance, so I would prefer not have have to deal with nVidia's closed-source drivers -- isn't there also an open-source driver from XFee86-4? ("nv"?) And shouldn't the kernel load agpart to use the AGP slot? How do I get it to do this stuff?

I have seen this with both testing and unstable.

Also, once I get proper video output, how do I configure a default window manager and gnome desktop for all users?

Thanks!