Bug#612956: What I found that worked...

[stuart]

In case people read these bug threads looking for a work around...

As of about 2011.02.24 (yes, a couple days ago) I was able to get my 
nvidia based debian box back up by following these general steps:

1) I removed Experimental from my sources.list file and made sure all my 
xserver packages were at the level found in debian unstable.

2) I removed all my nvidia packages.

3) I downloaded from the debian repository pool all the files in the 
nvidia directory matching the pattern *260*386*deb (I assume these are 
part of the experimental set of nvidia drivers) and manually installed 
them.  I don't believe nvidia-glx_260.19.21-1_i386.deb will install on 
account of dependency issues.

4) I forced the nvidia-glx_260.19.21-1_i386.deb install.

I rebooted and got my debian / nvidia box back.

(Earlier in the week I was able to leave Experimental in my sources.list 
file.  But xserver-common got updated which lead to other dependency 
issues.  That's the reason for step 1.)

-good luck