service mdm stop is just a shortcut to /etc/init.d/mdm stop, more or less anyway, so there should be no real difference between the two.

I could be wrong, since service mdm stop could actually be mapped to whatever is running that system, like init, upstart, systemd, so I guess more information would be needed to know what mint service is pointing to.
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After asking on the Mint forums,looks like running sgfxi in a virtual console after logging in as root (which implies the creation of a root password,not a standard procedure in Ubuntu/Mint) instead of running the script using sudo as usual,should do the trick and avoid the respawning of mdm in the middle of the installation process.
I haven't tried yet,though.
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that's not a solution in my opinion, however, you should be able to go to tty at the login screen, with ctrl alt f1 but it may try to respawn. The solution is how to stop that absurd respawning behavior, which should not happen at all, if you tell the system to shut down x and stop mdm, then the systems SHOULD respect your command, not invent some alternate reality where you don't know what you want and where it fixes your mistake for you.

Sometimes I think the the people who try to invent 'solutions' to 'problems' in desktop linux should find other areas to focus on, like, oh, say, creating stable desktop apis, which is what users really want and need.
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Well they dished out Gnome3 and its clone Unity...

Ok,back to MDM,I couldn't agree more,why on earth do I have to unlock the root account in Ubuntu/Mint just to be able to run a script without MDM popping up just when it's supposed to stay out of the way..

I'm not 100% sure now,but after MDM respawns,I could not get back to the console without logging in again,the good thing is that sgfxi was still doing what it was supposed to do and the driver was installed in the end.

I'm not going to redo all the procedure now,but since I'll have probably to reinstall Mint shortly,I'll try to keep track of what happens exactly.
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