In Slackware you will not find the native NVidia drivers bundled with its distribution, but rather the drivers hacked by XFree86 upto some of the early NVidia TNT2 cards. Even if you used the ones provided by XFree86, you would not be able to take full advantage of your video card's hardware, since the gl module of XFree86 uses Software render for OpenGL, and not hardware "thanks" to NVidia's closed source on its gl module for XFree86. In other words,if you just use native XFree86 drivers, it will be pretty, but WAY slow.
In order to install the new drivers (at this time the latest drivers are version 1.0-2960), you have to download
(1)the
glx binary provided by NVidia, and
(2) the
kernel module source (it's Open Source - which means you are going to need to compile it).
First, you need to uncompress the glx module package, and run the makefile. It will wipe out all references of glx, and OpenGL libs, it knows will prevent your card from working properly. Then it will install the new ones meant for your card. JUST REMEMBER THIS, if you end up switching to a non-NVidia card, you will have to re-install the XFree86 modules, since the one's replaced by NVidia do not work with any other card.
Then, uncompress the kernel module, and run the makefile, it will create the kernel module, install it, and create the necessary devices for the module to work properly. They should be something like /dev/nvidia0, /dev/nvidia1, etc. And the module's name is NVdriver, and should be under /lib/modules/<your_kernel_version>/kernel/video.
Once you have completed the above task, you can edit your XF86Config file, and add your card in it. Something like this:
.
.
.
Section "Device"
Identifier "NVidia GeForce 4"
# REMEMBER to replace the nv Driver by the new nvidia Driver.
Driver "nvidia"
VideoRam 65536
# Option "Rotate" "CCW"
# Option "ShadowFB" "on"
# Option "NvAGP" "1"
# To get rid of the logo at start, uncomment below
# Option "NoLogo" "True"
Option "IgnoreEDID" "True"
Option "NoRenderAccel" "False"
Option "NoDDC" "False"
Option "UseEdidFreqs" "True"
#Option "BusID" "PCI:1:0:0"
Option "ConnectedMonitor" "crt"
EndSection
.
.
.
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen 1"
Device "NVidia GeForce 4"
Monitor "NEC LCD 1810X"
DefaultDepth 24
Subsection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768"
EndSubsection
Subsection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768"
EndSubsection
Subsection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768"
EndSubsection
EndSection
.
.
.
And that should be it. As long as you have not touched the kernel that came standard with the distribution. Just read the README that comes in both packages you have used to get more info on this setup.
GL
/edit: added one more info.
/edit: fixed sentences.