This took a while.  There were so many online guides and each had different results, not all positive.  I tried Fedora 17, Centos 6, and Ubuntu 12.04LTS.  Centos 6 was the easiest from a driver installation but the downside was that Centos does not supply BOINC in their distribution.  BOINC from the BOINC website would not install because it had been compiled against a different distro using different library structures.  You do have the option of downloading BOINC source code and installing on Centos and this would fix the problem.  But ….

Using a combination of procedural steps from both the Fedora and Centos  installation readmes I came across I was able to get the NVIDIA drivers installed on FC 17.  See the side bar:  “Seti@home, Fedora 17, BOINC…” for detailed installation instructions on Fedora 17.  This is my attempt to identify exactly was is needed for a successful installation and how to get there.

These procedures might also apply to other Linux distros, but the file naming convention and file locations are different on Fedora 17 so that will require adjustments.  But the basic step/procedures I think would apply.

None of what I provide is original but taken/borrowed from multiple websites.  I have posted most of these websites in a “USEFUL LINKS” section of the detailed install.   You will be visiting some of these sites to download various components and will encounter much of what you read here and  in the detailed procedure on those sites.