Video Card Drivers for Linux

Video Cards (ATI, DRI, Matrox, Nvidia)
Ati

The drivers for older ATI cards is shipped in your linux distribution. Newer ATI cards are supported directly by ATI, you can
http://www.ati.com/support/driver.html
Select linux from the list of supported operating systems, then select the type of driver you need, then click on go. The instructions for installation are on the ATI web site.
A howto posted to the alt.os.linux.mandrake newsgroup is available here

Dri
(Supports VIA, Trident, SiliconMotion, SiS, S3, Matrox, Intel, ATI, 3dfx, 3dlabs)

The Direct Rendering Infrastructure is a project that supports most video cards. This driver is 100% open source, so it should come with all major linux distributions. But as this isn't always the case, I'm linking to it anyway. I got my ATI LT PRO card on my laptop to run 3D with this driver, it works perfectly and Tuxracer is perfectly playable. Not all cards are supported, and the vendor supplied (ATI, NVIDIA) drivers are usually better, but this is a good solution if you have a card that your vendor doesn't support on linux.
http://dri.sourceforge.net

Matrox video drivers

You can download the drivers from http://www.matrox.com/mga/support/drivers/latest/home.cfm
For most systems please use the beta drivers, as they support XFree86 up to version 4.3
All the documentation is on the web site, you probably won't have any problems in using these drivers, they also aren't dependent on the kernel version.

Nvidia video drivers(Geforce, TNT and TNT2)

Nvidia has very good 3D accelerated Linux drivers, you can download them from drivers section of http://www.nvidia.com
Download the installer, browser to the directory where the you've downloaded the file, and right click it. Now go to permissions, and give the file executalbe premissions by ticking the appropriate box.
Now open a shell, under KDE you can use konsole, type su, insert your root password when requested Now, after closing all applications, run "init 3". Your graphics system will shut down, you'll get a console, log in as root, and move to the directory where you dowloaded the installer with the cd command, then run the installer
./NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7664-pkg1.run
obviously the installer's name may change if a new version is released
Follow the on screen instructions, to install the driver, you may need your linux source code installed. Run
startx
and the graphics system will start as root, open /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 with a text editor like kwrite
find the section device, it looks like this

Section "Device"
    Identifier "device1"
    VendorName "nVidia Corporation"
    BoardName "RIVA TNT2" (This line depends on what video card you have, don't change it)
    Driver "nv"
    Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Change the line driver to Driver "nvidia", so that this section of the file looks like this

Section "Device"
    Identifier "device1"
    VendorName "nVidia Corporation"
    BoardName "RIVA TNT2"    (This line depends on what video card you have, don't change it)
    Driver "nvidia"
    Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Now save the file and exit the session, you'll go back to the console. Run "init 5 && exit"
From now on you've got a complete OpenGL 2.0 3D implementation, and you can run all the 3D games and application you want. You'll also get full frame rate dvd playback support (If you need a dvd player for encrypted dvds click here)
The complete documentation for these drivers are on the nvidia web site.

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