Hi guys. I did a dist-upgrade, then discovered I need to use gcc-4.1 to install the nvidia drivers correctly on my system (since the kernel was compiled with gcc-4.1). I tried uninstalling gcc entirely, then specifying the 4.1 packages when i reinstalled, but it automatically defaulted the 4.3.

I'd really rather not recompile the whole kernel just to get this done, but i will if i have to as i want the latest nvidia driver and not just that from the repos (trying to install NVIDIA 180.29). Is there some way i can force a downgrade to gcc 4.1?

I wouldn't worry about the version of gcc. The Nvidia script will let you continue anyway and it will work fine. I would recommend though using sgfxi to install video driver. Much less headache and seems to work everytime.

I agree with eriefisher.

Ctrl Alt F1 to get out of X
Type root and its password and then
sgfxi

sgfxi automatically tests for the proper gcc version your kernel used, and either uses that one if present, or installs it and uses it if it's missing.

If both of these efforts fail it will exit with an error.

excellent, thanks, that did the trick.