hi,
first of all laptops are usually a pain to install linux on (when you finally have set it up to work, it works pretty good though)
on slackware i can tell you that you probably had to use the sata.i kernel during installation instead of the default bare.i.
on fedora i don't know much about XFDrake or whatever they use to set up your screen resolution, what you need to look (google or the unofficial website for linux
http://newsletter.toshiba-tro.de/main/) for is the exact screen resolution for your monitor and the you can change the settings in the file /etc/xorg.conf