What is "nomodeset" SUPPOSED to do?

[Steven P. Ulrick]

Hello Everyone,
What is "nomodeset" SUPPOSED to do?  I really do want to know, because I wonder

if "nomodeset" is ineffectual on my system, and that's why I can't get
the 
rpmfusion nVidia driver to work (it used to work on this same system under 
Fedora 12.)

I want to go with the nVidia driver because:
1. nouveau (in KDE) leaves me with a hideous multicolored (grey & black) taskbar 
at the bottom of my display.
2. Whatever driver is defaulted to when nouveau won't run (vesa?) will boot 
perfectly on my system, BUT it only displays at a maximum resolution of 
1280x1024.  1920x1080 is the resolution I was running it at with this same 
system, same monitor, same video card on Fedora 12.

So, I'd really like to know if my problem is because "nomodeset" is doing 
nothing on my system...

Steven P. Ulrick