I believe you're using the Intel 852GM chipset. Support for that card wasn't included into XFree until 4.3.0. RedHat 8.0 comes with 4.2.
I think you should either upgrade to XFree 4.3.0 which can be done through lynx or ftp at the cli or get a distro that uses 4.3.0.
I could be wrong though about 852GM support. Sorry about your first introduction with Linux on a laptop.
I have a Toshy also, so get ready cuz there some things we have to deal with that others don't. Gotta love em though
