New to Linux, need help

I just installed Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger) and there's two problems I'm having:

1. nVidia drivers aren't installing (cc line 19 error), and I've tried every solution given to me, to no avail

2. I need an emulator or something else that will make winmodems work with Linux. This is really important because sometimes I'm forced to use dialup.

All help is appreciated, thank you.

try win4lin that might work for the second. Otherwise I would try searching for your devices on google or something, with the words "on Linux" after it, I've had lots of problems with Ubuntu myself.