Installing drivers in various distros?

[Panix]

Hello,
As I'm a complete noob, I admit that I'm totally confused when it comes to installing video drivers. Since, I aim to experiment with different distros, I am wondering how one installs video drivers for a video card or even for a video chip/board in a laptop.

I am choosing the Nvidia driver section here since I am getting an Nvidia card (7950 GT) to upgrade with. This topic could just as easily be generalized with ATI cards, though. I decided to upgrade with an Nvidia card until ATI/AMD's newer cards and drivers are more stable (or working with less issues) since I'd like to support open source.

Sorry for this text to be so long. Let me get to my main question. I have researched and visited various distro forums (SUSE, K/Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva etc.) and I'm confused on how to install the drivers. It seems easiest with Debian/debian package-based distros giving several options including the program , Envy. But, what if I want to do it in Fedora or another RPM-based distro?

Is it the nv (open source) driver I'd want or the 'livna' driver? Or both? Sorry about the ignorance and confusion (I have). I am asking here since this seems like the place to learn about drivers (installation) and how to go about the various options available.

Thanks for your tolerance and understanding.